Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should YouTube videos be added too our sitemap
-
Our company recently started making videos and posting them on our YouTube channel. Should we include the YouTube videos to our sitemap for our main domain?
Thanks,
-
You don't need to include them no, and You can't include a sitemap entry for a YouTube video page anyway, only individual pages on your own site.
You can choose to include embedded your YouTube videos in your video sitemap if you wish - (Tutorial for you here: https://www.distilled.net/blog/video/creating-video-sitemaps-for-each-video-hosting-platform/) But this isn't the best strategy to take if you're trying to get rich snippets (see here: http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy)
I hope that's useful!
-
No, you do not need to include links to youtube.com in your website's sitemap. Google has no problems indexing videos on YouTube and your sitemap is meant to help Google index content on your own website.
Video sitemaps are a must if you are using self-hosted videos (ie- not a YouTube video player). To learn the basics of video SEO, go here: http://moz.com/blog/building-a-video-seo-strategy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does google index html5 tracks (captions) for videos?
If we add the <track> tag next to a html5 video, with a Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT) file for video subtitles / captions will google visit that and index it?
Image & Video Optimization | | ismgadmin0 -
Updating Youtube Videos: Does this Reset Your Views to 0?
Hello Moz Community, Our team is looking to update a few videos in our Youtube channel but are concerned that doing so will reset the current amount of views to 0 once the change has been made. Would anyone happen to know if this happens or if the views remain the same? Also, how do the updates to the videos affect rank and visibility? Thank you all for your help.
Image & Video Optimization | | PowerhouseMarketing1 -
Can you get rich snippets for Youtube hosted videos?
My website has several videos, mostly product reviews and tutorials. I'd like for these videos to show in the SERPs with rich snippets, but I am hosting them through Youtube. What is your experience with Youtube hosted videos? Do they generate rich snippets? Or will Google always rank the Youtube video over your web page?
Image & Video Optimization | | TMI.com1 -
Do I need to use a CNAME for wistia video hosting?
I'm using Wisita for video hosting. My strategy is to allow other sites to embed videos to get links - I want the video linking back to my site not wistia or the embeding site. Do I need to use the Wistia CNAME or is a wistia subdomain acceptable?
Image & Video Optimization | | BruceMcG0 -
Vimeo Pro, video SEO and rich snippets
Hi All, we are producing product demonstration videos. One major aim with these videos is to help our rankings for these specific product pages and associated keywords... and to get rich snippets displayed on Google results pages against our listing. We have used schema.org markup in the product pages body code along with / next to the embed vimeo video code on the product page in order to hopefully get us rich snippet listing... we used schema.org markup as this seems to be the main current markup for rich snippets we have hosted the video via Vimeo Pro so that it is served quickly and not affected by speed of our hosting server or any possible bandwidth issues on our hosting server and ensure sthat the traffic comes to our site pages rather then Youtube or similar Vimeo Privacy settings for the video have been set so that we have not allowed it to be embed anywhere except for our own domain and the video is not displayed on Vimeo.com to ensure that the video is not duplicated anywhere else... so that this is unique content on our own site for maximum value for our domain We have used the "old code" from Vimeo Pro for embedding the video on our product page rather than the current iframe code as from what i understand Google cant follow very well and doesn't necessarily trust content displayed in iframes. Video and schema.org markup code used is on product page is: <div itemprop="<a class="attribute-value">video</a>" itemscope itemtype="<a class="attribute-value">http://schema.org/VideoObject</a>"> <p ><strong>Watch our <span itemprop="<a class="attribute-value">name</a>">Click 7 Lite Duo demonstrationspan>:strong>p> <meta itemprop="<a class="attribute-value">thumbnailURL</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/img/products/nextbase-click-7-lite-duo-thumb.jpg</a>" /> <meta itemprop="<a class="attribute-value">duration</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">T2M23S</a>" /> <span itemprop="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>">A product demonstration showing what's included in the box when you buy a Click 7 Lite Duospan>...:<br /> <p align="<a class="attribute-value">center</a>"> p> <p align="<a class="attribute-value">center</a>"><object width="<a class="attribute-value">500</a>" height="<a class="attribute-value">281</a>"><param name="<a class="attribute-value">allowfullscreen</a>" value="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" /><param name="<a class="attribute-value">allowscriptaccess</a>" value="<a class="attribute-value">always</a>" /><param name="<a class="attribute-value">movie</a>" value="<a class="attribute-value">http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=67392721&force_embed=1&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0</a>" /><embed src="[http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=67392721&force_embed=1&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0](view-source:http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=67392721&force_embed=1&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0)" type="<a class="attribute-value">application/x-shockwave-flash</a>" allowfullscreen="<a class="attribute-value">true</a>" allowscriptaccess="<a class="attribute-value">always</a>" width="<a class="attribute-value">500</a>" height="<a class="attribute-value">281</a>">embed>object> p> div> Page this code is used on: http://www.3wisemonkeys.co.uk/proddet.jsp?id=2016&cat=1 Could anyone confirm whether the above seems to be what we need to do / should be doing to get the most value from these videos for helping our web site rank better with Google / search engine results pages as well as getting rich snippets displayed? Lastly does the above code seem correct and include all the necessaries for rich snippets? Thanks for any pointers.
Image & Video Optimization | | jasef0 -
Best Video Sitemap plugin for wordpress? And do I need both a video sitemap and a normal one?
Hi all, I currently use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin on my wordpress site. But we've recently began adding (self-hosted) videos that we've been careful to markup with the relevant schema. However, there's a couple of things I don't understand and am hoping someone could help: Do we need a separate video sitemap that either works alongside Google XML Sitemaps or replaces it? If we do need a video sitemap, what's the best video site map to get? (we are using the Thesis theme so can't use the Yoast one unfortunately as they don't play nice together...) Thanks for your help! Andrew
Image & Video Optimization | | seowhiskey0 -
Local SEO address question - adding a suite number for shared address for office building
Hi, I have a client that has an address that is shared for a few different businesses in the holistic health field. My client is a chiropractor. There is an eye doctor, massage therapist and acupuncturist aslo sharing the same address. It's a subburban setting with two buildings all sharing one address. In the interest of preventing any merged listings down the road, I recently added un unofficial suite number to his website and Google places business listing. I also did this for all of his online directory listings, and for Bing and Yahoo as well. Did I do the right thing here? It seems to be having a positive impact on his local SEO as far as I can tell. Or at least there has not been any negative impact in the last 6 months Your thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | MozMan20 -
URL redirect to a YouTube Channel?
Hey all, We recently ran a video content contest on a micro site and we generated some links for the URL. In December we are planning on doing a redirect of the domain to our YouTube channel where all of the videos hosted. My question is how much SEO benefit will there be by redirecting to our YouTube channel vs redirecting to a single video from the contest. Does the strength of the channel as whole affect the videos in that channels ability to rank on YouTube and in SERPs? The other option is to just redirect the URL to our product page on our main website, but to me that doesn't seem like it would provide the best user experience 🙂 If anyone has experience with this kind of an issue I'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | Tektronix0