Video is becoming increasingly common on ecommerce sites. As a site owner, you can use video to give shoppers a deeper understanding of products you sell or build your reputation as a trusted expert. Video can also be prominent in Google Search. By surfacing your video content on Google, you can open up additional paths of discovery to drive awareness of your business and engagement on your site.
Where videos can appear in Google Search results: Videos can appear on the main Google Search results page or on the Videos tab. Videos are frequently presented with a thumbnail image and other helpful information such as the playback duration and summary text. In addition, Google can now highlight key moments in your video content, allowing users to navigate the video like chapters in a book. When a user taps a key moment, they'll land on your site where they can begin watching the video from that moment in time.
Video can be a powerful tool for ecommerce businesses, providing engaging content that can inspire or inform shoppers. Product pages are a common place to embed videos, offering richer information than static images alone. Videos can also be included in articles and blog posts, sharing reviews, behind-the-scenes looks, or stories about your business. Different types of video content will appeal to different shoppers, depending on their stage in the shopping journey.Many people are also interested in learning more about the business itself, such as your position on recycling or supporting your community.
As online streaming becomes increasingly popular, many ecommerce sites are looking to take advantage of this trend. While some platforms allow live streams to be embedded on pages, others require a bit more work to get set up. In either case, it is important to ensure that your videos are properly indexed by Google in order to maximize their reach.
There are a few things you can do to help Google index your videos: first, make sure you have direct control over the HTML markup on your site. This will allow you to properly tag your videos with the relevant information that Google needs. You can also try using a plugin or extension if your CMS does not give you direct access to HTML.
Another tip is to host your videos on a social media platform. This way, the platform will be responsible for making the video available for Google to index. Finally, remember to record your live stream so that it can be made available as a regular video after the fact. This will give your content a longer shelf-life and make it more accessible to those who are searching for relevant information.
If you have video content on your website, it's important to include video structured data. This will help Google index your videos properly and may even give your videos a LIVE badge in search results.
For maximum exposure, you may want to create a dedicated page for each video. For example, a "how to clean your Brand X coffee maker" page is likely to attract different traffic than a Brand X product page that includes the same video. You can use the Indexing API to provide Google with timely updates when a stream starts and ends.
To ensure that Google can find and index all the web pages on your site with video content, create and submit a video sitemap file. In addition to Video structured data, also add relevant structured data to each page, such as Product, HowTo, or Q&A markup. For more information and best practices for sites with videos, check out these new resources that give an overview of how videos appear on Google. Posted by Alan Kent, Search Advocate on the Google Search Central team.