3 Best Practices to Help Google Discover Your Videos for Better SEO

In 2022, video will account for more than 80 percent of internet traffic, and more than half of all consumers want to see more video content from businesses they deal with or are considering dealing with. But it’s not enough to simply make video content for your deathcare firm. Taking a few steps to position videos to be found by Google helps boost SEO and generate more traffic for your site.

Here three best practices Google recommends for ensuring the search engine knows about your videos:

1. Make the video publicly available.

Google can’t easily crawl a video hidden by a paywall or one that requires a log-in. The search engine recommends giving important videos a dedicated page on your website. The video should be the predominant focus of the page, though you can pair it with an article or transcript for enhanced SEO and content accessibility.

You may know that you should avoid duplicating the same content over various pages on your website, but video breaks this rule. Google says you can create a dedicated page for the video and include it again on your site in a blog post or news article.

2. Use HTML to identify the video.

HTML tags that literally identify your video as a video help Google crawlers know it’s there. Google suggests any of the following tags to place around your video in page code:

• <video>
• <embed>
• <object>
• <iframe>

Is HTML all Greek to you? You should work with a web developer or marketing firm; they can help ensure your videos are properly positioned and coded for optimal SEO.

3. Choose a thumbnail that’s good quality and relevant.

The thumbnail is the image that’s shown along with links to your video in search engines or on social media profiles. If you don’t specify a thumbnail, the system automatically grabs a random still shot from the video. That’s not always flattering to any person in the video, and it can make for some irrelevant and unenticing images.

Instead, choose a still shot yourself or create a thumbnail that helps people understand what the video is about and persuades them to click.