Video SEO

Introduction

Search engines, like Google Search are entry points for people to discover and watch videos. Those search engines will try to automatically understand details about your video but you can explicitly provide information to those engines with video-oriented structured data and video sitemap for better discovery and indexing. Taking the example of Google, your videos could appear in Google Search results, video search results, Google Images, and Google Discover. This could become more organic traffic going to your website or app. You can review Google Video SEO best practices here. This guide is not meant to be a comprehensive guide about video SEO but highlights how to use Radiant Media Player to comply with some video SEO best practices.

Structured data markup

We can provide metadata about a video with structured data markup to tell search engines what this video is about. More specifically, we will use the schema.org - VideoObject so that your content may be featured as video rich result in search engines. In the following section we will focus on using JSON-LD to create video-oriented structured data but you may also use microdata.

Typically you will be adding to your page where your video stands a script tag with information about your content. This script tag will then be read by search engines and your video could be presented to searchers in a video-friendly format. Example for on-demand video content:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "VideoObject",
  "name": "What is Radiant Media Player?",
  "description": "A video to show what Radiant Media Player has to offer in the streaming media industry. Radiant Media Player is a modern go-everywhere HTML5 video player. Create web, mobile and OTT video apps in a snap. Learn more at radiantmediaplayer.com",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://cdn.radiantmediatechs.com/rmp/media/intro-rmp/snap/v2/poster.jpg",
  "uploadDate": "2022-05-01",
  "duration": "PT50S",
  "contentUrl": "https://cdn.radiantmediatechs.com/rmp/media/intro-rmp/snap/v2/playlist.m3u8",
  "embedUrl": "https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/docs/latest/gist/iframe/index.html"
}
</script>

There are 2 items that we would like to review here:

• VideoObject.embedUrl: the URL of the custom player. This is often the src value for an <iframe> or <embed> tag on the page. For Radiant Media Player we use iframe mode and point towards that player
• VideoObject.contentUrl: Google needs to fetch the video file itself to understand the video contents and enable features like video previews and key moments. Google can fetch the following video file types: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, XAP. Radiant Media Player can play HLS (M3U8), MP4 and WebM files - MPEG-DASH is not a supported format for VideoObject.contentUrl with Google

For a live stream:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "VideoObject",
  "contentURL": "https://5b44cf20b0388.streamlock.net:8443/live/ngrp:live_all/playlist.m3u8",
  "description": "This is a live demo with HLS to Radiant Media Player, it loops and loops and loops until it loops again!",
  "duration": "P12Y1M1DT1H1M1S",
  "embedUrl": "https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/docs/latest/gist/iframe/live.html",
  "expires": "2035-05-06T19:01:01+00:00",
  "name": "Live HLS demo to use with Radiant Media Player",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/images/radiantmediaplayer-logo-1280x720.jpg",
  "uploadDate": "2023-04-05T18:00:00+00:00",
  "publication": [
    {
      "@type": "BroadcastEvent",
      "isLiveBroadcast": true,
      "startDate": "2023-04-05T18:00:00+00:00",
      "endDate": "2035-05-06T19:01:01+00:00"
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Video sitemap

In complement to structured data, you should want to create a video sitemap for your site/app. A video sitemap is a sitemap with additional information about videos hosted on your pages. Creating a video sitemap is a good way to help search engines find and understand the video content on your site, especially content that was recently added or that may not be immediately discoverable by search engine crawlers.

For an on-demand video:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
  xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com</loc>
    <video:video>
      <video:thumbnail_loc>https://cdn.radiantmediatechs.com/rmp/media/intro-rmp/snap/v2/poster.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
      <video:title>What is Radiant Media Player?</video:title>
      <video:description>
        A video to show what Radiant Media Player has to offer in the streaming media industry. 
        Radiant Media Player is a modern go-everywhere HTML5 video player.
        Create web, mobile and OTT video apps in a snap. Learn more at radiantmediaplayer.com
      </video:description>
      <video:content_loc>
        https://cdn.radiantmediatechs.com/rmp/media/intro-rmp/snap/v2/playlist.m3u8
      </video:content_loc>
      <video:player_loc>
        https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/docs/latest/gist/iframe/index.html
      </video:player_loc>
      <video:duration>50</video:duration>
      <video:publication_date>2022-05-01</video:publication_date>
      <video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
      <video:live>no</video:live>
    </video:video>
  </url> 
</urlset>

The following tags are required tags for a video sitemap: <video:video>, <video:thumbnail_loc>, <video:title>, <video:description>, <video:content_loc>, <video:player_loc>

As with structured data, there are 2 items here to review:

• video:player_loc: the URL of the custom player. This is often the src value for an <iframe> or <embed> tag on the page. For Radiant Media Player we use iframe mode and point towards that player
• video:content_loc: Google needs to fetch the video file itself to understand the video contents and enable features like video previews and key moments. Google can fetch the following video file types: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, XAP. Radiant Media Player can play HLS (M3U8), MP4 and WebM files - MPEG-DASH is not a supported format for video:content_loc with Google

For a live video:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
  xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com</loc>
    <video:video>
      <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/images/radiantmediaplayer-logo-1280x720.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
      <video:title>Live HLS demo to use with Radiant Media Player</video:title>
      <video:description>
        This is a live demo with HLS to Radiant Media Player, it loops and loops and loops until it loops again!
      </video:description>
      <video:content_loc>
        https://5b44cf20b0388.streamlock.net:8443/live/ngrp:live_all/playlist.m3u8
      </video:content_loc>
      <video:player_loc>
        https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/docs/latest/gist/iframe/live.html
      </video:player_loc>
      <video:publication_date>2023-04-05T18:00:00+00:00</video:publication_date>
      <video:expiration_date>2035-05-06T19:01:01+00:00</video:expiration_date>
      <video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
      <video:live>yes</video:live>
    </video:video>
  </url> 
</urlset>

High-quality video thumbnail

Pay extra attention to the VideoObject.thumbnailUrl (structured data) and video:thumbnail_loc (video sitemap) fields and make sure to provide high quality thumbnails for your video content for a better search experience. Supported thumbnail formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG. A high-quality video thumbnail, not only a high resolution - well compressed image, but an image that accurately represents your content is very important to drive engagement towards your site/app.