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Your schema implementation seems fine, but I'd also recommend creating a video sitemap if you struggle with indexation, since this is typically a more surefire way of getting the videos indexed. The YouTube embed may also be confusing for Google with regards to "which video do i index", so a video sitemap would help with this as well.

However.... my main comment regarding the question of further value and improving rankings would be that you seriously need to look at your page types and the quality of the content you're creating.

I want to say this in the nicest possible way... but that video, and the page structure as a whole, is pretty bad. The video is incredibly slow moving and actually doesn't provide any valuable information, which could actively harm your conversion rate and bounce rate rather than help matters. I'd suggest you next spend time looking to improve your site design and structure - which should help improve your conversion rate. Following this, It'll be much easier for you to do things like link building which will help increase rankings.

I've never heard of that happening and to be honest, I'd be extremely surprised if adding aggregrate review mark-up to category pages (providing it was relevant and legitimate) triggered any sort of penalty. If the mark-up was essentially a bit deceptive or irrelevant, I could potentially see a manual reviewer giving the site some sort of page level penalty, but I've never heard of this happening and would be suspicious of such assumptions.

I actually don't think you should make the judgement regarding what needs changing yourselves - or take my word for it either! That said, I agree that the points you mentioned are particularly problematic

Your initial starting point should be to source some data from actual users and user testing groups regarding their perceptions of the site - particularly looking at what may have prevent conversions or almost stopped people from converting. There's tons of information about this stuff (CRO) online - but I'd start with running the Panda questionnaire that i mentioned previously and then use http://www.usertesting.com/ to source some good feedback from a wider selection of individuals.

From here - you should then hire a designer or get a freelancer in, who can action this stuff and come up with a refreshed design.

I'm 90% positive it's because you've hidden the video code itself behind a JavaScript trigger, so Googlebot struggles to see it.

While you used to be able to get videos indexed just with a video sitemap, Google have got slightly better at working out whether that sitemap actually corresponds to content in the HTML, but if you've used JS to execute the embedded video, you're likely to find that it won't get indexed.

So, I'd recommend looking at fixing that implementation and potentially see if you can do it just with CSS, or shift the page around so the embed loads up when the page does, not after a secondary trigger.

Hi Vadim,

not to pick on you at all, because I think you've given a great answer - but I want to generally object to the suggestion of using things like Animoto and Wideo etc... because the kind of content you get in return, while it's scalable and low cost, it's also really low quality and incredibly generic.

IMO, if your video doesn't speak to the USP of your product or your brand in some fundamental way, It's not worth doing. I know that's a hardline to take, especially with SEOs who often, sadly all want to do everything as cheaply as possible and don't care too much about quality -- but I really think you're always better off following your second suggestion and finding a talented freelancer or student who can build out something customized and uniquely valuable for you. The cost shouldn't be prohibitively greater and you'll get way more for your money in the long run.

Hi Sheldon,

I'm afraid I completely disagree with your advice here. When i say "self hosting" this doesn't necessarily mean you have to host the content on your server - using a CDN will do the same job from an SEO perspective and not come with any of the bandwidth concerns.

However, if you don't want to self host, the alternative - as I mentioned - is to use a paid third party solution such as Vzaar, Wistia, Vimeo Pro, Brightcove, Ooyala etc... not YouTube

YouTube is essentially a social platform and can outrank you for your content if you're trying to drive traffic. Additionally, if you content isn't relevant for a YouTube audience - it'll do very poorly on the platform since the user engagements metrics will suggest that the content is substandard.

Hey Dan,

In short - no, I don't think is going to be a problem for you. YouTube are aware that their auto-generated transcripts are often inaccurate, so I don't imagine you're going to find that profanity coming up there has any effect on the categorization of the video. That said, It's really easy to fix by just uploading your own version of the transcript, which will take precedence over the autogenerated one. ThompsonPaul has given a great explanation of a quick and easy way to do that also on this thread.

In terms of a channel trailer, once you log into your YouTube account, under the "Home" button, there should be a massive icon called "Channel Trailer" with a blue button, which will allow you to upload a trailer or choose one from your library.

Hi Sheldon,

I've written about this extensively, but there are definite concerns about YouTube outranking your content and it can happen irrespective of the number of views garnered. Raw views are not a ranking factor on YouTube - so virality is not the only instance of a YouTube video outranking the page it's embedded on. Imagine, for example, how Google should calculate which page should rank if the page is embedded across multiple sites all optimised for the same keyword.

Now..I'm not saying YouTube is never the appropriate hosting solution - far from it - but I am saying that the reasons you would choose self hosting preclude YouTube from being a viable alternative. YouTube should only be used where content is consciously created for the platform, in order to take advantage of the social visibility it offers.

For more information  - first watch this video: http://wistia.com/learning/advanced-seo-with-distilled

then read the following posts:

http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube

http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy

http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo

I hope that helps clarify things.

Hi team at Booj,

I've written quite a few things since that article which expand on the topic of video hosting and YouTube, which I recommend you have a look at. The most relevant one for you will be http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube which explains when YouTube is a valuable marketing channel.

You should also find this http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy useful and there's a video on this page http://www.distilled.net/consulting/video-seo/ which covers the topic in some detail.

Additionally, my presentation from MozCon this year covers the topic in depth, so I recommend having a look through those videos when they're available.

Thanks,

Phil

No, you can't migrate the video.

in terms of embedding - an iframe is super lightweight. Just embed a YouTube iframe and you should be fine.

Yes - use Open site explorer.

Some details on how to do that in this guide: http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/#6

I have no idea where the "video is 50 times more likely to get organic page ranks in Google than plain text results" comes from, but it's completely not true and doesn't even make sense.

I don't think there's a weighting factor that says "if this is a video, it should rank higher", but having rich media like video, on a page, does correlate slightly with better rankings. This does not mean there is necessarily any causal relationship though.

What is true, however, is that having a video snippet can dramatically affect click through rate (both positively and negatively), which can then affect rankings. I don't have any up to date numbers on this, but Im wary of actually listening to the numbers at all for this kind of question, because so much depends on market, the site, the intention of the page and the quality of the thumbnails.

Instead of thinking "if i get video results, will i rank better", you should instead take a step back and work out whether or not it will help from a user perspective to have video on the page, and if so, whether or not video thumbnails will be a virtue or a vice. There is a tool which we use to determine this at Distilled, called SERP Turkey, which was built by our head of R&D - go check it out.

Some general remarks - I think the quality of the thumbnail is a huge overriding factor here that rarely gets talked about. i've seen numerous examples of rankings have dropped when snippets have been implemented and usually this correlates with having very low quality and unappealing thumbnails. If you're thinking of investing in video, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to get a great, eyecatching thumbnail in place, rather than something generic.

You should instead take a step back

Hi Michelle,

So - firstly, a week is not enough time to determine whether there is a problem with indexation. Videos can take weeks and even months to get indexed, even with all the appropriate mark-up applied, and so I'd recommended at least holding fire for a few more weeks before being too concerned.

However... there are quite a few things on the page in question which could confuse Googlebot and therefore pose problems for you. Firstly, you've embedded the same video twice on the page - once in a lightbox behind a JavaScript Trigger, and then once just embedded into the page. It's hard to know whether Google will be able to execute that JavaScript successfully, but it's highly possible this double embed could confuse Googlebot (and confuse users!). Is there any particular reason why you've embedded the video twice? Secondly, you've also embedded a load of YouTube videos at the bottom of the page. YouTube videos get indexed on the pages they're embedded on instantly, but don't often rank with rich snippets in the blended organic results. This is also a fairly confusing signal to Googlebot, where the "one video per page" model still seems to be the most effective way of getting everything indexed correctly.

I hope that's useful!

Phil

Google see iframes as basically "a window into other sites". As such, no, they don't crawl links in this way - however, they will likely then crawl the page which the iframe references, and thereby pick up any backlinks there.

I'm not quite sure how this might related to an embedded YouTube video, but YouTube videos are indexed instantly anyway once they're published because Google don't need to crawl YouTube (they have access to the database)

I use a 5D Mk III, three Arri 750 lights and Sennheiser MKE Lav mics for the DistilledLive videos - EXAMPLE

For talking head videos, I don't think there is a massive difference between using a good lav vs using a boom microphone - you can get great quality from both. Similarly, the difference between a DSLR and a good camcorder is relatively marginal as well for simple recordings. The things that really make a difference are firstly understand how to set up your lights, and secondly having some post production skills.

Lighting will be the major factor in determining the quality of your image and you need to find a way to effectively remove shadow while keeping a natural skin tone on your subject. Once you've mastered the lighting, you need to understand basic colour correction and grading - as well as how to mix and master audio tracks. For vocals, you want to cut quite heavily any superfluous frequencies at the top and bottom end that just pick up noise, as well as adding compression and a bit of reverb to bring some life to the sound.

Nope, they can't. Those links are within the iframe.

If you're trying to get link equity from embedded video, it'll need to be with crediting text links or images outside of the actual player, as overlays are done with JavaScript, which doesn't pass PageRank by all accounts.

Hi Jason,

my apologies - I didn't realise I'd already looked at the site and offered similar comments previously!

Yes, embedding the videos in the block of text should work fine - just make sure you don't duplicate this in lightbox though, as this may cause some confusion for Googlebot.

I'm afraid I can't quite remember what the site looked like last time, but I have to say I actually think the overall look, feel and structure is pretty decent. Good job! My main concern generally speaking would be with the site build and the back-end. It's currently very slow to load and things like the drop-down don't work very well on tablets/mobile devices. As mentioned, the videos are also delivered through a lightbox in a slightly strange way which isn't great for SEO.

Video wise - I do completely take your point about the value of the content even though it's not ideal, however, I would advise extreme caution if you're serious about trying to rank with rich snippets. It's not easy to "undo" getting a video rich snippet - and if the poor quality thumb actually lowers your CTR and therefore rankings, it'll obviously be pretty disastrous for you. So, I definitely recommend split testing this if you can before pushing ahead - using SERP Turkey as a tool to do this for you.

No, don't do this, it's a bad idea.

Just because you have content assets doesn't mean you should put them everywhere (it's the same principle as syndicating a blog post). If the content isn't relevant for an audience on YouTube, which product/sales focused videos typically aren't, then they shouldn't be on there. Content should be created for the YouTube channel, not just put on there because you have it.

Additionally, self hosting your content and putting it on YouTube can have negative technical impacts. You can find that YouTube will outrank your pages, which splits your traffic and view count, thereby damaging your SEO; you're also failing to optimise for YouTube in this way, since you won't be driving any YouTube views through the video embeds.

For product videos, the goal is never to get as many people to see them as possible, but rather to drive as many sales as possible, which means you need to get people to view the content in a context where they can make a purchase (not on YouTube, since there's no "buy" button).

Not true. Just because a video is on YouTube, it doesn't mean it'll rank better than if it is self hosted.

Actually, this isn't quite true Moosa...

Very few people convert from watching YouTube videos and the CTR back to a site in order to make purchases is typically less than 1%.