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Your player_loc tag as an example.com link in it and the file you're pointing to in your content_loc tag is a .swf file, which means that should be a player_loc tag instead.

Other than that, it looks fine.

If you won't want to adjust the technical implementation of the videos - I'd recommend just using an XML video sitemap, rather than Schema.org mark up to provide metadata about your videos.

You can use the gallery_loc tag to account for playlists.

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

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.

It really depends what the content is like, but I'd recommend using Wistia as a rule for anything very product focused.

YouTube is more like a social marketing channel than a video hosting platform and you have to ask yourself "is this content relevant for a YouTube audience". You can qualify this by using the YouTube keyword tool to get some ideas about what people are searching for and also look in your YouTube analytics to see how many of your views are actually coming from other youtube.com pages, rather than referrals from Google or other sites. If the content isn't relevant for a YouTube audience, then there is no benefit to having the content on the platform. Additionally, YouTube.com pages can outrank your own site for branded queries, which is suboptimal. The only other thing to bear in mind is that contrary to popular belief, YouTube is not normally a good source of referral traffic. People don't often click from Youtube videos back to your site, so don't rely on this as an option if you're trying to drive traffic to sell products.

Your best bet is probably using Wistia, getting rich snippets for pages on your own site and driving all the traffic to your owned resource, rather than Youtube.com... since your audience can't buy from YouTube, so you're just adding a step into your conversion funnel unnecessarily.

Hi Ruben,

So - as a rule, I actually don't think a basic animated video is the best kind of video to use to explain things in a whiteboard style. Part of the success of the Moz whiteboard Friday is that it connects people on a personal level to the brand, through videos of the actual Moz staff, rather than through animation which can be a bit cold and alienating - especially for B2B content.

Additionally, Animation is extremely difficult to scale well. If you're trying to do animation with regularity, you're almost certainly going to end up creating content that is low quality - unless you have tens of thousands to spend. There are a load of services out there that will do low priced animation for you (but I won't name them because of what I'm about to say) and in my opinion, the output quality from all of them is extremely generic.

My advice would be to invest in a basic studio set-up and actually start filming videos yourself, like Moz do. It sounds daunting, I know, but it's much more scalable and will pay off in the long term. Some more advice here: http://wistia.com/learning/video-production

Ilcho,

It sounds like you probably have a technical issue which is preventing your content from being indexed. I'm afraid I can't really offer more advice on this point, other to suggest paying a specialist to take a look into your specific situation.

Thanks,

Phil.

Hi Steven,

So - I'm seeing 244 videos indexed for your site and definitely way more than 33 images. (just do a site: search in Google to get some more accurate data about indexation). In this instance, i'd be inclined to suggest that webmaster tools is just not giving you an accurate picture (this is not uncommon) and it will probably fix itself in due course.

One thing to flag, for videos especially, is that it can take a while (weeks) for Google to index the content. I recommend holding out for a month or so more and seeing how things change. If the indexed number starts to increase in Google, irrespective of what webmaster tools says.. then it's fine.

Can you provide details of the keyword in question?

There are many search terms which Google never offer a video result for - simply because it wouldn't be relevant for the term in question. If i search "car insurance" I almost certainly don't want to see a YouTube video.

The same is true with Google+ local results, shopping results etc... the explicit and implicit context of the search defines what sort of results are returned. If it's a search term which doesn't match up with what Google deem to be "appropriate" for a video result, you won't get a YouTube video ranked - no matter how strong the page is.

I would recommend embedding the video higher up on the page.

in multiple instances, I've seen videos fail to get indexed because they're way "below the fold" and my gut says that is what is happening here.

The answer would be - neither.

It's not quite correct to describe something as being preferable to Google in this instance (because ultimately Google want everyone to put all their videos on YouTube then embed them everywhere so they can make loads of money in ad revenue), but in terms of SEO for an eCommerce site, and assuming your videos are to some extend product focused pieces - you should avoid YouTube altogether, because it can cannibalise your rankings, while giving you very little benefit in terms of seeding on YouTube.com (people don't go to YouTube to find products to buy...)

I've written about this extensively here: http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy and here http://moz.com/blog/the-marketing-value-of-youtube

So, your best bet is using a third party paid hosting platform, e.g. Wistia, Vzaar etc... where you can retain full control of the videos and use them to drive traffic to your site and generate leads/sales.

In terms of implementation, It probably won't matter a great deal, as long as your videos are visible to Googlebot on pageload and not delivered dynamically with JavaScript etc..

All you need to do then to get the rich snippet is submit a video sitemap.

The video is still behind Javascript there, which could prevent the content from being indexed.

It's hard for me to say one way or the other without testing, but my gut instinct is to say you'll still struggle to get the videos indexed. Google can execute some JavaScript, but from tests i've done it's not super consistent.

Also - don't use YouTube to host those videos - it's not a wise move (more details here: http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy), especially since you're allowing others to advertise on your videos.

Is it significant that it's a hangout as opposed to a YouTube video? - No, I don't think so. A hangout-on-air is ostensibly the same as a YouTube video, it's just that it's recorded and streamed live.

I'm actually not seeing it ranking at all though, how does it look for you in incognito mode (just checking personalisation isn't a factor)

Hi Ken,

This is a tricky question to answer without more visibility over your site, the video and the overall plans - but concretely I'd probably just recommend getting the video indexed on the main page you want to rank with that video. Having the same thumbnail appear across a number of pages can be a bit weird, and is ostensibly the same as having duplicate text across multiple pages - that is to say it can cannibalise rankings if done at scale.

Thanks,

Phil.

Yep, build some links :).

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%.

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

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).

Hey Sirmontegu,

Basically, I'd recommend you just mark the YouTube videos as unlisted (which is like putting a noindex tag on your videos) so that user experience isn't damaged for anyone who has already linked to the videos and you'll retain the view count on your channel (good  for social proof) but will also ensure your YouTube videos don't outrank the canonical version on your site, as well as ensuring your more YouTube friendly content is prominent on your channel.

Then all you need to do is ensure you're submitted a video sitemap (with the Wistia toolset) and you should get the videos indexed on your site.

Cheers,

Phil.

So, there's nothing algorithmic that would "flag" or penalise your channel as such and it wouldn't necessarily be "bad" for SEO as such, but I'm confused on a couple of fronts.

Firstly, how you would include other's videos on your YouTube channel? Do you mean to just make playlists with other interesting videos included (this is totally fine), or are you actively going to upload other peoples videos? If so, would you have permission to use them?

Secondly, why would you want to do this? Bear in mind that YouTube is generally a really really bad channel for anything sales focused or promotional. If you're trying to drive traffic and sales, you're almost certainly better off self hosting your videos rather than putting them on YouTube (more details here and here) and unless you're trying to get tons and tons of subscribers (not really a relevant strategt for an Ecommerce site) then there's nothing wrong with having a leaner channel that just has a few videos on it.

In short - What use case is going to benefit you by having users watch other people's videos on YouTube?