This week we are excited to welcome a guest post from Black Kite Marketing to the blog. Black Kite Marketing is an expert SEO agency and we are thrilled to have them share their insights with us. In this post, Black Kite Marketing will discuss structured data for video content.

Schema markup is one of the newer developments in SEO. It is still evolving and a powerful yet least-utilized form of SEO available today. The main reason is people are still unaware of how it can help boost their website in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Continue reading to learn how to use schema markup for your website.

What is video schema markup?

Video schema markup can be defined as a series of HTML codes and tags on the backend of your website that can improve search engine crawling, indexing, and displaying of your site’s content. It explains the structure of your video to search engines, enhancing their ability to properly display the content.

How can video schema help your digital marketing efforts?

Integrating video schema will make it easier for Google and other search engines to find your videos that address users’ queries. It will help:

• Your SEO efforts and improve your rankings
• Opportunity to include your material in featured snippets of search engine results pages (SERPs). 
• Enable more people to see your product and 
• Better chances of their making a purchase 

Structured data has never been more relevant and valuable than now, with more users changing to mobile devices to get their daily information. 

How to implement video schema markup 

Here are a few steps you can follow to execute video schema markup:

1] Check if your page supports rich results

Confirm if your page correctly picks up and displays rich results with Google’s Rich Results Test. Just plug in your URL or HTML and press the “Test URL” button. Once the URL is verified, the test is over, and you can view your score.

2] Generate your video schema

Open Google’s structured data markup helper. Then select your video data sort to start developing your video schema. You can use the type of content you want to markup as a guide. If your markup has a blog and an embedded YouTube video, select “Article.” However, if it is just a video, you click on “movies.” Then connect your URL or link to the video page or blog where you want to add video schema markup. After that, you can click “Start Tagging.”

3] Emphasize the  objects you want to add schema markup

You will see a list of data elements on the right side of the screen. You can then begin using the bolded features and highlight details of the pages you want to insert in rich snippets and identify them in the dropdown that appears.  

4]Create HTML

Click on the “Create HTML” button, and then an HTML page will appear on the right-hand side of the page. Select an output format, preferably JSON-LD or Microdata. Google understands these formats and makes them eligible for special placements in SERPs.

Please copy the code or download it. If you are utilizing JSON-LD, paste the developed code into the body of the existing page. If you choose Microdata, supersede your page with the generated HTML.

From there, you can view the HTML data and download it.

5] Add the data to your content management system (CMS)

Once you complete the data downloading, add it to your CMS by following your medium’s instructions. Then, you’ll be good to start ranking.

How video schema makes a difference

Search engines might only know about the video’s title, description, and thumbnail when you don’t have video schema markup. However, with video schema, you can be more specific with the search engines describing the content on a web page containing a video. You can tell those engines about the video’s time, who created it, who has starred in it, who is the copyright holder, and even add a video transcript. 

Here are a few video schema markup parameters you can use with video schema markup 

Name: The title of your video. You must include a relevant keyword here.

Description:  A short description of around 160 characters explaining what your video contains. 

Thumbnail URL: Don’t ignore an engaging thumbnail in a SERP. Choose one carefully from your video’s frames and use its URL here.

Duration: The length of the video can be a decider for any audience. Most people prefer shorter videos, so this tag can help search engines.

Transcript: Since you have a brief description, a transcript can give more details without worrying about character limits. Taking the time to add this can result in a helping hand in ranking the video page.

Schema generator tools to boost your online presence

Here are some schema generator tools to help you add SEO-friendly schema markup to your website.

Schema Pro: Schema Pro is an easy-to-use plugin for adding schema markup and getting rich snippets from your site displayed on Google’s search engine. It can support 13 different types of schema.

Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and Data Highlighter: Google offers two identical tools to help website owners and developers add their schema to their websites. Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper allows you to add all kinds of structured data to your website and tag relevant page parts with the correct schema.

Schema Markup Generator by Merkle: This tool is an excellent, easy-to-use schema markup generator that removes the need for coding things yourself.

They offer several options for you to pick from on which type of schema you want to create. All you need to do is select the schema type you wish to add and fill in the required information.

MicrodataGenerator.com’s Schema.org Generator: It’s effortless; all you need to do is choose the type of business you run and add the relevant details. This tool then outputs the code that you need in JSON-LD format.

This tool is free and offers a range of business or schema types for you to choose from.

Conclusion:

SEO and video marketing can be a game-changer in the online world; By using Video Schema Markup on your website you will separate yourself from competitors doing basic SEO. You have to do this to give your website that significant SEO boost.

Luckily as we went over in the article, there are several online tools and resources that you can find on the internet to achieve this. At Black Kite Marketing we use these tools day in and day out, why not have a professional agency in your corner to help you implement your video schema markup strategy.

Call Black Kite Marketing at (516) 259-1813 today and find out how we can help! If you are looking for additional video services, reach out to HSV Innovations for a free consultation, today.