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I don't think Margarita means the "unrendered" files, but rather the video files used within the embedded player - which will be .mp4 or .flv or .mov etc. References to these files are required  as part of a video sitemap as a video:content_locelement. </video:content_loc>

Hi Margarita,

So - firstly, I can't quite understand the logic behind your Dev teams concerns here - as anyone knowledgable enough to find your video sitemap and pull the file URL from there will also be knowledgeable enough to look through your source code and rip the video file through the embedded player. If somebody really wants to download your content, they will - and a video sitemap listing the URLs of the mp4/mov files isn't going to be advertisment for people to do this.

If, in another attempt to prevent piracy, the dev teams are delivering the video content dynamically via JS - you're going to face another issue as the videos may not get indexed.

However, all that said... there is a way round this which may pacify your dev teams and still get the rich snippet results you're after  - and that is including a video:player_locelement in the sitemap, rather than a video:content_locelement. video:player_locshould point to a specific embedded player for a specific video -e.g. an .swf flash file or a dynamic HTML5 player e.g. http://player.vimeo.com/video/36862925.</video:player_loc></video:content_loc></video:player_loc>

This will prevent users from finding the original video files outside the context of the embedded player, but i should add that it's not an effective block against piracy.

I hope that's useful, let me know if you have any more questions.

Cheers,

Phil.

Hey Kate,

That's an interesting Question. I think you may struggle to find someone specifically trained in the requirements you state, as Video SEO and Video optimisation is a very specific skill that only some SEOs will have experience of, and few people working in the technical video space will have even heard of.

That said, I'm sure you should be able to find someone for the role by just advertising for the core competencies required and then training a good candidate up in the specific video optimisation skills, which are fairly simple principles to learn.

I would recommend taking a two-pronged approach to hiring - searching for people in the production space with some web experience and searching for people in the marketing/SEO/web space with video production experience. While your job description has mostly "SEO" type skills, to be a good video optimiser your candidate will also need an understanding of encoding, embedding production and dramaturgy. So..I suggest posting the job here:

• Mandy
• Production Hub
• Skill Set
• Film and TV Pro

Requesting a technical editor with web experience - specifically analytics and HTML.

Then also put the job on http://jobs.inbound.org/ and any other SEO jobs boards you can find, but ask for the core SEO experiences and some video production knowledge, rather than specific YouTube optimisation skills.

Obviously YouTube experience is a bonus, but in my honest opinion, it shouldn't be a pre-requisite because of how easy it is to pick up the basics

Once you've found someone with the core skills - both creative and technical ability, then essentially get them to go through this guide - http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/ and all related links in depth.

However, It is a tough thing to find candidates for and I expect it is going to take you a while to locate the right person. It recently took me about 4 months to find and hire an editor & animator with HTML experience at Distilled and the challenge wasn't getting someone with the right skills, but finding someone who was talented and smart enough to be able to work things out for themselves, try new things and get to grips with the ever changing landscape of online video.

Hope that's somewhat useful.

Cheers,

Phil.

Hey Tina,

I actually wouldn't worry too much about this, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the site isn't actually linking to you from the video pages with an

Hey Tom,

This should be a relatively simple process for you.

Just ensure you aren't hiding the <video>tag behind a load of JavaScript and then reference the .mp4 version of the file in the <content_loc> element of your video sitemap, along side a thumbnail and other required metadata -http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472</content_loc></video>

However, in answer to your Q's, there are a couple of things you can do to make the rich snippets surefire

1. You should also add the videoObject schema mark up (http://schema.org/VideoObject) before the <video>tag  <div< span="">itemprop="video" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject"></div<></video>
2. If you're delivering both videos through the same player, i basically wouldn't worry about it and would just mark everything up to match the default (i assume) HD settings. Otherwise, i'd mark the two different versions as different schema.org videoObject's, using videoQuality and videoFrameSize to differentiate one as HD and one as SD. In your video sitemap, you should then include both videos under the same URL.
3. Google claim they don't currently crawl Theora files. While this will certainly change going forward, i would for now just include the MP4 file in the video sitemap. What you include in the actual HTML probably wont matter, but safest bet will be to have the MP4 referenced.

Hope that's useful!

Phil

It's true that Google can't read the actual content of a video - but they are getting there slowly but surely. First they'll be able to match audio wave forms, then pick out frames as essentially a selection of image sequences.

What Google can do however, is work out when there is a video on page, what size the frame is, how long the content is and how it's encoded/embedded. For additional information - like you say, transcripts, Schema and video sitemaps can be used.

Therefore, to a certain extent, you can get away with putting duplicate video content across your site and showing different meta elements in the video sitemap - but only if you don't host with YouTube. Google  can work out, using the aforementioned methods, whether or not YouTube videos are direct duplicates and prevent you from uploading them.

Nonetheless - videos are always "good" content, by virtue of being a rich media type.