EDITS.WS

Tag: Video SEO

  • How to create a video website

    There are many reasons why you may want to create a dedicated website for your videos. Perhaps you’re selling a course that you want to put behind a paywall. Maybe you’ve created a video series or podcast that requires its own branded home. Or maybe you just want to create an immersive environment for users to consume your video content, without the typical distractions of YouTube.

    Whatever your goal, you can take two approaches to achieve this. You either use the automatically generated pages from a video hosting service or e-learning platform, or you build a dedicated website then embed your videos across it.

    Using a video hosting service or e-learning platform

    If you don’t want the hassle of maintaining a website, this is the way to go. By using a video hosting service or e-learning platform, you can easily store your videos. These services are also useful if you want out-of-the-box monetization options for a video course.

    Vimeo Showcases & Collections

    Vimeo offers two ways of building out a quick video website:

    1. Showcases allow you to put together an elevated playlist, which is ideal for a short series. Plus, you get to create a nice looking webpage to accompany it. 
    2. Collections are designed to support Vimeo OTT. This is a subscription service for those looking to monetize a library of video in a simple way. It’s priced at $1 per subscriber per month.

    Sprout video

    Sprout video offers a lightweight CMS that can be used to create a video website with multiple pages – and applied sitewide to a custom domain of your choice. It’s a great choice if you want a simple plug-and-play solution, and you have a fairly large library of video content that you want to categorise by topic.  

    If you have some CSS and HTML skills, you can customize Sprout video’s CMS somewhat. However, at that point you may be better off building a custom solution with WordPress.

    Example video site from Sprout Video

    Wistia Channels

    Wistia Channels is a great solution if you have serialized video content that you’re publishing regularly, like a podcast. Channels allows you to combine audio and video, and create a branded landing page that looks a bit like a video streaming service. Plus, it includes unique pages for each video. 

    You can run Wistia Channels on a standard Wistia account subdomain URL. But you can also embed it into any page on an existing website, if you use a simple JavaScript embed code – thereby straddling the options of video hosting service vs. own website.

    An example of Wistia Channels in action

    Kajabi

    For video courses and courses that include videos alongside written content in particular, Kajabi is a great solution. It allows you to build a quick video website that you can easily monetize. Kajabi has a very simple WYSIWYG CMS that doesn’t require any web development skills to use. Plus, it can be integrated with an existing website.

    Example video site created with Kajabi

    Creating a video website

    If you’d like to do something more custom, or integrate your videos as part of a bigger web experience, you could consider creating a website with a more traditional CMS before embedding your videos. The advantage of this is not only in being able to build something precisely to your design and structure specifications, but also in having a web property capable of driving traffic from organic search and organic video sources.

    WordPress is the ideal base technology

    In the vast majority of cases, the best CMS for creating a video portfolio, series or course website will be WordPress. With thousands of video gallery plugins and integrations with all the major video hosting platforms, WordPress gives you all the options you need for a custom video website. Plus, it’s very simple and requires little technical know-how. You can very simply include videos from almost every platform in any page you created with the Gutenberg editor. Meaning: video can be part of the fabric of your WordPress site out of the box.

    And if you use WordPress, you can also use the Yoast Video SEO plugin! The video SEO plugin ensures that your videos are indexed in Google, so you can drive more traffic to your website through video search.

    Yoast Video SEO plugin

    Options for integrating videos in WordPress

    If you want to integrate your videos more elaborately within your chosen page types, there are a lot of great options out there.

    LearnDash

    LearnDash is a great plugin for a course-type video execution. It allows you to include videos from any source, like YouTube or Wistia, then create user playback triggers for course progression.

    Wistia Channels

    As with the standalone solution, Wistia Channels works really well as a way of creating a video gallery within any other page or page type. It creates unique URLs for every video within the gallery. These URLS are indexable by Google, which is great for your SEO.

    All-in-one video gallery

    This plugin is a bit like a mini CMS within a CMS. It allows you to build a fairly feature-rich video gallery experience within a WordPress website, bringing in videos from YouTube and elsewhere. All-in-one video gallery is a reasonable solution if you want a simple and traditional catalogue of your videos within a single page.

    Example of All-in-one video gallery

    In conclusion: building a video website is fairly straightforward and shouldn’t feel intimidating. Whatever your needs, there are great options out there.

    Read more: How to stop videos negatively impacting Core Web Vitals »

    The post How to create a video website appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to stop videos negatively impacting Core Web Vitals

    Embedded videos are an increasingly important part of websites. And it’s easy to see why. They add an engaging and interactive layer to all manner of page types. But there is one problem: video files are big. Particularly on lower bandwidth mobile connections, they can be very slow to load.

    This can be a problem from a user-experience standpoint, especially if the video is critical for the display of the page (such as with an auto-playing background video). But it can also be a challenge for SEO. Having too many big videos on a page can negatively impact your Core Web Vitals, particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) & Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Let’s dive deeper into these two topics, and what you can do to fix it.

    Largest Contentful Paint

    If your page includes an inline embedded video, then that video is part of the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). What does that mean? It means the video is a critical part of the page experience, both from an algorithmic and user standpoint. If your LCP time is too slow (for example, when it depends on the execution of a large amount of JavaScript), then you might receive a failed Core Web Vitals assessment in Google Search Console. Which looks like this:

    Google likes to see pages load up within 2.5 seconds on a mobile 3g connection. That’s definitely a challenge if HD video files are critical to your page experience.

    Cumulative Layout Shift

    If videos are the last to load on your page, they can cause issues with Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). How? By forcing blocks of text or images to move around on the page as the video is loaded.

    To mitigate this, you either need to ensure your videos load with the HTML – but this may block rendering elsewhere – or ensure the frame in which the video will appear loads even before the file asset itself.

    Fix with placeholders

    The way to fix these issues isn’t to remove videos from your website! Instead, you should be smart about how JavaScript and media files are loaded. With video, this means using thumbnail image placeholders – small image files that load in advance. They can act as a trigger for the video to be played when clicked.

    If you use these thumbnails, then the Largest Contentful Paint is complete. Even without executing the JavaScript associated with video players! In addition, you have solved the Cumulative Layout Shift almost instantly.

    The solution: Yoast Video SEO plugin

    The Yoast Video SEO plugin has a number of benefits for improving your site speed and health. For example, loading thumbnail placeholders! Rather than loading each video file as soon as a page request is made, the Yoast Video SEO Plugin loads up a placeholder image in advance of the videos. While the user views the page, the plugin loads the videos in the background. The result? When a visitor clicks on the play button, your videos are ready.

    The placeholder images are also small and quick to load, which means the Largest Contentful Paint can be built out very swiftly. Plus, there’s no danger of a late Cumulative Layout Shift occurring due to a slow-loading video file. In other words: the Yoast Video SEO for WordPress plugin is an easy way to ensure your videos don’t negatively impact your Core Web Vitals!

    The post How to stop videos negatively impacting Core Web Vitals appeared first on Yoast.

  • How businesses should approach short-form video

    Nowadays, short-form content is all the rage. Just look at TikTok’s astounding popularity amongst younger generations. It has lead to the development of new and compelling video formats that are mostly found in feeds with a passive discovery mechanism. Or as the younger generations (ominously) call it: the algorithm. In this post, we’ll take a look at how businesses should respond to this trend. We’ll also discuss where short-form video fits within a wider creative content marketing strategy.

    What is short-form video?

    Short-form video is not quite the same as videos that are short. It refers to videos that are roughly 06-60 seconds long, organically distributed through feed-orientated social media platforms, and consumed overwhelmingly through mobile devices. They are typically, but not always, shot vertically. This is to keep in line with the screen they’re typically consumed on. You can find short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram Stories, YouTube shorts, and the like.

    What about 30-second ads? Are they also considered short-form content? Not in this context. We’re really referring to formats created for organic distribution rather than paid. Another example are short films. They’re historically considered short-form, but in the online world where video has been led by YouTube formats, something that’s 5 to 10 minutes in length is actually considered a mid-length piece.

    How short-form video works

    Short-form video is mostly passively distributed. The user opens up the app in question, presses a button, then receives a stream of content, which they may choose to watch or skip depending on their interests. Depending on the app, the feed is influenced by different things. Instagram’s feed is influenced by who you have chosen to follow, whereas TikTok focuses more on your engagement level with the content and what the algorithm thinks you’re most likely to engage with next. YouTube Shorts sit somewhere in the middle, combining subscription factors, demographic and other data into a complex recommendations algorithm.

    Quickly capture people’s attention

    Short-form video is geared exclusively to offer instant appeal. There’s a 1-3 second window where users will decide whether to keep watching or move on to the next thing. So you only have a few seconds to try and capture people’s attention. Combined with the short nature of the content, this means that most videos follow a “gag” format. Every video that works immediately sets expectations of what the audience will receive, then swiftly delivers or subverts it. 

    Visual storytelling

    People primarily watch short-form videos on their smartphones. Because this usually happens in in public, most people turn off their sound and watch videos in silence. This means all of the storytelling and creative execution needs to be primarily visual. Videos can still include music, though. After all, some of the most successful short-form videos use music extremely effectively. But it’s important to keep in mind that the essential message and narrative of any video needs to be communicable without sound, such that the essence of it still holds together.

    So what can you do for existing videos? You can adapt existing videos by including subtitles and visual overlays where audio or speech is critical to understanding. You can also visually point out to users that the essential “gag” is tied to the musical/aural aspect of the video.

    When to invest in short-form video

    From a business and marketing standpoint, it can be tricky to work out if and when to invest in short-form video. It’s not a reliable way to build an audience or ensure returns, because short-form video discovery is mainly led by algorithms, and less influenced by things like subscriber numbers and historical brand/channel performance. Even experienced creators should generally expect that for every video that gains traction, 30 videos will not.

    So it’s important that you’re comfortable with uncertain and unreliable returns. Any business that approaches short-form video with a performance marketing mindset centered around ROI and optimization will find things very challenging. Even one viral success on TikTok or YouTube Shorts probably won’t do anything for the bottom line over the long run. A million hits on TikTok is not going to represent the same value as a million visitors to your website.

    It’s absolutely possible to build a brand as a short-form video creator, though. But it’s good to note that brand salience external to the short-form video platforms tends to have only a minor bearing on the effectiveness of distribution. Unless you’re willing to continuously and repeatedly build up your identity as a short-form video creator. However, this can take many months and years. Not to mention, you would probably need to create hundreds if not thousands pieces of content.

    So when is short-form video effective?

    Short-form video is particularly effective when you can present your brand expertise in a visual format. For example, you could show the creation or function of your product, or demonstrate a process/action quickly. The purpose of these short videos is to provide value to an audience likely unfamiliar with your brand/product, and help them understand a bit about your brand value proposition.

    Another way you can use short-form video is by advertising and promoting long-form pieces. If you’re creating a podcast, hosting webinars, or creating longer pieces for YouTube, then short-form platforms are a fantastic way to show clips and trailers of your longer content.

    As a rule, if you’re investing in longer-form video, chop up your creation into clips and adapt those for short-form distribution. Your primary goal should be to encourage consumption of the bigger piece – likely to generate a deeper level of engagement with your brand.

    Tips for getting started

    1. Make sure the premise or “set-up” of the video is clear in the first couple of seconds
    2. Ensure your video is fully comprehensible with the sound off. If that’s not possible, you should include overlays and captions!
    3. Consider whether and what sort of music can enhance the entertainment value of your videos, and edit each one with specific tracks in mind
    4. Be clear what you want audiences to do after they watch your video. Is there another piece of content they should watch? Should your audience remember something, or take a specific action?
    5. Create lots and lots of videos. It may take hundreds before you find something that works. This is normal! Keep going.

    The post How businesses should approach short-form video appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to track video SEO performance using Google Search Console

    Google Search Console is the best data source for tracking the traffic you are getting to video content on your website from Google search, as it provides data directly from Google about the queries actually driving traffic, and can be segmented by video search specifically.

    In this post, we’ll provide a quick summary of how to use Google Search Console to track video SEO. We’ll also post a link to a Looker Studio Dashboard template which you can plug your search console data directly into.

    Ensure your videos are indexed

    Before you can track performance, you first need to ensure your videos are indexed and recognized by Google Search Console. If you want to know how to do this, check out our guide about how to use the video indexing report.

    Find your search results

    Navigate to search results in the performance menu. This is the report which holds the data you can use to measure the performance of your videos in search. It can be found in the sidebar of Google Search Console.

    The search results report within performance in GSC

    Measure the performance of video results in Universal Web Search

    Once the report has loaded, scroll down to the table below. Its default setting will be queries, so select the “Search Appearance” tab. You’ll see a list that shows the types of results offered in Universal Web Search.

    A list of the types of results offered in Google Web Search

    In this list, you should see “Videos”. This refers to rich video snippets shown individually or as part of a video pack within Universal Web Search. If you click on “Videos”, the graph at the top will offer a refined view.

    A graph showing traffic from video snippets in universal web search

    Note that you can only get an aggregated metric that combines traffic from all video queries and pages at the moment. While this report is useful for benchmarking, it isn’t great for a more granular analysis of your performance of video results.

    Measure the search terms driving traffic in Google Video Search

    Above the graph controls, you’ll see boxes that allow you to segment and refine the data. Click on “Search Type: Web” and select “Video”. The graph and table will now adjust to only show queries that drive traffic from video search, so the video tab in Google.

    A graph showing traffic from video-specific search

    You can then adjust the date range to compare different time periods. You’ll be able to see how traffic and impressions have changed over time.

    Scroll down the list of queries to find the terms that drive the most traffic from video search. This will be reported as “Organic Video” in Google Analytics 4. These terms can be exported and organized in a spreadsheet or database, so you can track the keyword-level performance of video content.

    Measure the pages receiving traffic from Google Video Search

    With “Search Type: Video” selected, you can navigate to the “Pages” tab in the table. It will display a list of pages that drive the most traffic from video search.

    A list of pages driving traffic from Google Video Search

    This is particularly useful if you have the same video embedded across multiple pages and wish to see which URLs are ranking most frequently. 

    Move the data to a Looker Studio report

    While the data within the Google Data Studio interface is really useful for gaining a snapshot of your video SEO performance, it becomes particularly valuable when you move it into a setting where the data can be segmented in more detail. Looker Studio (Formally Google Data Studio) is great for this. And to make it easier for you, we have created a Video SEO Performance Report Template. Simply make a copy of this template, then plug and play with your data.

    A comparison of clicks and click-through rates for queries in video search

    One of the great benefits of this report is the addition of click-through-rate analysis to query and page-level data in video searches. Click-through rate tells you how appealing your video title and thumbnail are for any given query. So what does a low click-through-rate mean? First, it’s important that you compare the rate to other pages or queries. If it’s still the lowest, that usually indicates that your thumbnail could be improved. You can then use the pages with higher click-through-rates as inspiration to understand what types of titles and thumbnails are working.

    Track your video SEO performance

    Knowing which videos perform well and drive a lot of traffic is really useful. Because it tells you what people want to see. So if you use this information when you create your content planning, you’ll be able to make more videos that your audience will love. So dive into Google Search Control and look at those numbers! And if you’re serious about using video to drive more traffic to your website, you give your videos the best chance of ranking by using the Yoast Video SEO plugin!

    The post How to track video SEO performance using Google Search Console appeared first on Yoast.

  • Common rel=”canonical” errors in video SEO

    Do you have two pages on your site that are practically identical yet necessary in order for your site to work? And do you need one of them to be indexed in Google search? Then you should use the rel=”canonical” tag. It’s a useful tool in any SEOs arsenal. But where can you find the tag? It sits in the <head> of the duplicate page, and points to the version you want to be indexed. In other words: It tells Google and other search engine crawlers that this version is the “canonical”.

    With video marketing, there are common technical implementations that require specific use of the rel=”canonical” tag. For example, to prevent the indexation of duplicate and low-quality pages. There are also common ways many plugins and tools default to implementing rel=”canonical” that can hamper video SEO.

    In this post, we’ll break down the common mistakes typically made with rel=”canonical” for video SEO. And we’ll explain how to avoid them!

    1: Leaving isolated video hosting pages indexable with self-referencing canonical tags

    When self-hosting videos use a custom player and CDN, it’s very common to embed the videos as an encapsulated media file on an otherwise blank page. A video player can then reference the files via iframe or JavaScript. These pages will often live on a subdirectory or subdomain, e.g. videos.example.com/video-5.html. They usually serve no functional purpose for users, except to offer a location from which video players can find and pull in video files.

    Because the purpose of these pages is technical and they’re often not linked to (beyond instances in the video player code), the pages are true duplicates. Which means it’s not appropriate to leave them open to the index. However, the pages do need to be crawlable. Otherwise, Googlebot Video won’t be able to find the video files and index the videos.

    The best solution is therefore to implement rel=”canonical”. This will make your pages crawlable, while telling Google not to index them. Instead, Google will see them as subsidiary assets for the core page that the videos are presented on. This could mean that you need to adjust default self-referencing rel=”canonical” rules, so these isolated page include self-referencing canonical tags by default.

    Solution: Use rel=”canonical” to point isolated video pages to the pages they are primarily embedded on.

    2. Implementing canonical tags for the same video on multiple pages

    When indexing videos, Google considers a video as a child of a page rather than an individual asset with its own distinct URL, as they do with image files. What does this mean? It means duplication at a video level currently isn’t a particular consideration for Googlebot. Even if you include the same video on two pages and implement structured data so Googlebot can find and index the videos, Google doesn’t per se consider them to be the same video. 

    Note: This doesn’t mean you can publish the same video on as many pages as you like with no consequences. If the pages are otherwise very similar, target similar keywords, and have identical video titles and thumbnails, then this can still create confusion and ranking cannibalization. However, this would be a problem at page level rather than video level.

    In the future, there may well emerge a tool to indicate duplication at a media asset level. For now, though, the best solution is to ensure that each page you create contains unique content in addition to any duplicated assets. And trust Google to know which page is most appropriate to rank for any given query.

    Solution: Don’t use rel=”canonical”. Just make sure every page has unique copy and other unique media.

    What if you need to use the same video multiple times?

    For example, if you want to use it on a help page and a blog post. Rest assured, you can still do this without worrying about duplication. However, some people still feel that you should use rel=”canonical” to indicate this duplication. Their reason? The videos are identical, so one of the pages has to be more appropriate than the other to rank. This isn’t true, though. Because rel=”canonical” only operates at a page level rather than a media asset level, it would be an incorrect use of the protocol.

    3. Using URL parameters to indicate timestamps without rel=”canonical”

    If you want to stipulate to a browser to start a video at a specific point (rather than the start), you would probably use URL parameters. For example, YouTube videos work with a “?t=” parameter, and Wistia videos work with “?wtime=”. 

    URL parameters are a really useful feature. But they can be especially beneficial for Video SEO, since they allow you to create URLs to use in Clip Schema in combination with VideoObject. This, in turn, allows you to ensure that your videos are indexed for “Key Moments” in Google search, thereby taking up more attention and space in the results pages for any given query.

    However, if you use URL parameters like this, you’re technically creating duplicate pages for each “clip”. Which Google isn’t always able to assume should be defaulted to the page root. You therefore need to implement rules which ensure that any URL using the query parameter that stipulates video rules is automatically canonicalized back to the page without this query parameter (typically the root URL).

    Solution: Ensure that canonical rules automatically add a tag for URLs with a timestamp parameter. Make it point to the variation of the URL without this parameter included.

    4. Automatically canonicalizing query parameters that determine lightboxes and video galleries

    Do you have a video lightbox or gallery on your site? If so, then chances are you’re using video plugins or embed codes that use query parameters or hashes to indicate a URL variation.

    In such cases, the video player won’t load until the JavaScript is triggered, which is indicated by the adapted URL. For Googlebot to be able to find, render, and index these embedded videos, the URL variations themselves must be crawlable and indexable. This might sound contradictory to the advice we gave before. But there’s a crucial difference between the two situations: The change in content on the page, which occurs with the JavaScript function.

    You need to make these types of dynamically generated pages, such as those created through Wistia Channels, available for search engine crawlers. However, we recommend that you don’t use noindex or rel=”canonical” tags. This does mean you have to carefully consider the automatic canonical rules. In addition, you have to ensure that any parameters you use are not automatically grouped in with timestamp parameters, or tracking parameters that are implemented by other analytics platforms. These should be automatically canonicalized.

    Solution: Don’t add canonical tags to these pages.

    In summary

    The rel=”canonical” tag can be a useful tool in your SEOs arsenal. It specifies the “canonical URL,” or the “preferred” version of a web page. This means you can avoid pointing Google towards duplicate content. So if you use the rel=”canonical” tag correctly, it will improve your site’s SEO. Awesome, right? That’s why it’s good to know what the common mistakes are when using this task, and how to correct them.

    Read more: How to use the new video indexing report in Google Search Console »

    The post Common rel=”canonical” errors in video SEO appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to use the new video indexing report in Google Search Console

    In July 2022, Google launched a new video indexing report in Google Search Console. This report will allow you to see how many pages Google has found, crawled, and indexed a video on, and much more. It’s incredibly useful because it helps you understand the foundation of your video SEO performance. Plus, the report also identifies possible fixes for any videos that don’t seem to be appearing in the search results.

    So where can you find the report? Easy! Under the index heading in the sidebar of Google Search Console.

    The video indexing report in Google Search Console

    At the top, it provides a snapshot of how many videos are indexed and how many pages have video data. If Google hasn’t located and indexed a video, it is marked as “No video indexed”.

    Green is good. Grey shows that Google had problems indexing your videos

    Ideally, every video on your site will be indexed and included in the green tab. In reality, however, there may be issues on some pages that prevent indexation.

    In this post, we’ll run through some of the major uses of this report for managing your video SEO.

    1. Discover which pages have videos indexed

    To find out which of your pages Google has indexed a video on, click on the “Video data about indexed video pages” link just below the main bar chart.

    Video page is the indexed page. Video URL is the URL of the video on the hosting platform.

    You’ll receive a table that lists the pages where a video has been found, and the URL of the video player or file which has been indexed and associated with that page (usually a link to a page on your video hosting platform). You’ll also see the date the video was last crawled. This is really handy because it’ll tell you how up-to-date the information in Google’s index is. 

    2. Understand which data Google is using to inform display in Video Search

    If you click on any of the results within the table, you can see a granular, page-level report that tells you which discovered URLs Googlebot believes are video files. The method used for each URL is indicated in the report. Usually, though, it’s determined through HTML tags, Open Graph data, or Schema.org markup.

    Google tells you which data sources it is using to find and index videos from different hosting platforms

    You’ll also see the source of the thumbnail Google chose to associate with each video. This is typically through Open Graph or Schema.org data (labeled as “structured data”).

    Lastly, the report indicates “Video Placement”. This can mean two things: Google considers the video to be the core page asset or supplementary content. But don’t worry too much about this identification. Unless you have a page with just an isolated video embed and a title, Google will typically consider your videos to be “supplementary content”.

    In many cases, the report will show multiple video URLs for a single video. This can be due to fallbacks and multiple methods of video delivery. As long as each URL indicates the same video, this isn’t a problem, but if there are inconsistencies here, this can be an indicator of why a video is failing to consistently appear in search results.

    3. Identify duplication in video indexation

    If you export the data from the indexed videos report, you can quickly pull it into excel or Google sheets. You can then perform an analysis to identify any pages being indexed with the same video. It’s easiest to look at the “Video URL” column. Good to note: Video duplication across multiple pages is not necessarily a problem. There are many examples where the same video serves a good purpose in several locations. For example, in a blog post, on a product page, and also within a video gallery page.

    However, keep in mind that you lose control of which page Google will decide to rank for any given query where the video is a relevant result. This might cause issues. For example, if you end up sending users to a video gallery page for a query where a product page would be more appropriate.

    This investigative work can also illuminate canonical issues, for example with tracking parameters that Google fails to interpret as duplicated content.

    4. Assess video indexation problems

    Below the core report is a table titled “Why videos in pages aren’t indexed”. This table shows a list of issues Google has encountered while trying to index videos on your website. And it’s quite detailed too. You can find information on each of the pages where this issue was discovered.

    Some of the issues are self-explanatory, but some are indicative of wider issues with video implementation

    Most common problems

    Let’s look at the most common problems you can encounter, and how you can fix them.

    Google could not determine the prominent video on the page

    This is by far the most common issue you’re likely to run into with video indexation. Unfortunately, it covers a multitude of different scenarios rather than simply “prominence”.

    Sometimes it can simply mean that Google found a video on the page, but assessed it was too far down. Or that the video was too insignificant in regards to the page to be included in the video search results. If this is the case, a simple fix is to change the position and size of the video to something more significant. For example, near the top of the page. If your video is already in a prime location but hidden on first paint with some CSS, then amending this may also be a sufficient fix.

    In other instances, it can be a rendering problem. If the video requires JavaScript to load, then Googlebot will often determine the video insufficiently “prominent”. Why? Because on a basic page load, the crawler cannot find an embedded video player. This sort of issue frequently occurs when videos are included in carousels or other dynamic page elements.

    Cannot determine video position and size

    This typically occurs when using a lightbox or other “click to load” feature that rely on JavaScript. Sometimes plugins or tools decide to delay loading a video player until a user presses play. After all, this can save bandwidth and reduce page load times. Unfortunately, the side effect is that Google cannot find or render the videos.

    If you’re concerned about site speed and video, the best solution is to load the video player asynchronously. Good news: You can easily do this with the Yoast Video SEO Plugin!

    Unknown Video Format

    This error means there is a problem with the URL indicating the video file or player in your Schema.org or OpenGraph markup. A common example: OpenGraph sometimes creates a self-referencing URL marked as “video”. In doing so, they create a reference for a video file, which now points to the URL of the page rather than the media asset.

    Video Not Found on Host Service

    This issue is normally found with YouTube embeds where the video has been deleted or marked as private. If you see this error, the video you’re referencing has probably been removed. The fix? Update the embed to prevent users from receiving an error too.

    In conclusion

    The new video indexing report in Google Search Console is incredibly useful. You’ll be able to gain invaluable insights into your video SEO performance. Just be aware of some of the problems you can encounter. And have fun clicking through the new reports! If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

    Read more: On-page video SEO: how to optimize your video pages »

    The post How to use the new video indexing report in Google Search Console appeared first on Yoast.

  • How to make YouTube videos responsive

    When embedding a YouTube video on your website, you’ve probably discovered a minor but very annoying issue: YouTube embeds are not natively responsive. This means that when you’re viewing your web page on a mobile device for example, the video doesn’t properly resize with the rest of the page elements. This can negatively impact your website’s design and usability. So why does this happen, and what can you do about it?

    Why YouTube videos aren’t responsive 

    Standard YouTube Embeds, such as the one below, use iFrames to generate an embedded video player:

    <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kW0RtcJZC8″ title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

    The advantage of using iFrames? It’s a straightforward piece of HTML. Plus, it allows YouTube embeds to be compatible with the broadest possible selection of use cases, applications and content management systems. YouTube can also update existing video embeds with, for example, new player styles or advertising scripts from the server side without requiring users to change the code on their websites. This works because an iFrame essentially acts as a window to a different page.

    Videos sometimes don’t display properly at certain screen sizes. The video above doesn’t fit inside the screen.

    But there’s also a downside. Using iFrames can make YouTube videos slower to load on any given page. It could also mean that the videos aren’t always visible on first-paint, since a browser needs to find and load the iFrame before being able to load the video. Finally, and more frustratingly, without CSS or Javascript, there isn’t a native way to make YouTube videos adapt to a container. Which is why the embed specifies a size (560 x 315 by default).

    As a consequence, to make a YouTube embed truly responsive and optimized for mobile display, you need to do a bit of extra work. Luckily, there are several simple mays to make it happen.

    Method 1: With a bit of custom CSS

    The simplest way of using CSS to create responsive embeds is to create a class that features the property “aspect-ratio”. This property allows you to stipulate the aspect ratio of the class you are creating, such that it’s always resized within a container along that aspect ratio. Given that embeddable YouTube videos are all presented with a 16×9 aspect ratio, this means you can use the property to ensure everything scales accordingly.

    Let’s look at how method one works.

    First, create a class such as “youtube-video”. Next, give it the property aspect-ratio set to 16/9 with the width at 100%.

    .youtube-video {
  aspect-ratio: 16 / 9;
  width: 100%;
}

    You’ll then need to apply this class to any YouTube embed in the code, while removing the default width and height stipulation. 

    <iframe class="youtube-video" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5kW0RtcJZC8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

    This method is very simple for anyone comfortable editing basic CSS and HTML. However, it does require some work for each individual YouTube embed. This is less than ideal, especially for websites with multiple authors and editors who likely all try to embed YouTube videos in pages and posts.

    Method 2: With Gutenberg Blocks in responsive themes

    Some WordPress themes, such as Inspiro and responsive, have features that automate responsiveness for video embeds. So if you’re open to changing your theme and templates, it’s a simple matter of installing one of these. These themes have a CSS rule similar to method one that is baked into the theme. This rule will then be applied to certain blocks, and featured within the theme.

    In other words: If you use the “video” Gutenberg block, where you paste in the URL of the YouTube video you want to embed, your videos will remain responsive.

    However, be sure to test out these themes with your website first. The specific implementation may not work perfectly with your videos.

    Method 3: With the Yoast Video SEO Plugin

    If you’re a WordPress user, the simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is with the Yoast Video SEO plugin. In addition to automating the inclusion of metadata, which gets your videos ranking in Google search results, JavaScript automatically resizes the video embed for any device and browser size. Beyond just the container size, the video will adjust its height and width as the page scales. So you don’t need to worry about implementing custom CSS or tiresome browser testing!

    In addition, the Yoast Video SEO plugin uses asynchronous JavaScript to speed up loading times for YouTube videos as much as possible. This ensures that your videos are delivered in the best way possible to guarantee high play rates and engagement. The plugin is $79 a year, takes just a couple of minutes to install and set up, and ensures you never need to worry about responsive videos ever again. 

    Summary

    Videos are a great tool to use on your website. People love them! But if they don’t scale with the rest of your site, they can look clunky. Luckily, there are multiple ways to ensure that your embedded videos are responsive. Either with a bit of custom CSS or by installing a useful plugin like Yoast Video SEO, you can make sure your YouTube videos resize properly. You can also opt for changing your theme to one that has automatic video responsiveness. If you have any further questions or suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

    Read on: YouTube vs your own site: Which is better for video SEO? »

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