Video SEO for the videos on your own site.

Part one is the indexing audit. In Search Console, the video indexing report shows which pages with video Google found and which videos weren’t indexed, with a reason for each. We read that report, crawl your site for every page with video, and sort the results: indexed, not indexed and why, and videos Google never found. That list decides the work, so we fix what’s actually blocking you rather than adding markup everywhere.

Part two is the watch page decision. Google’s video SEO best practices say a video needs to be on a watch page, a page whose main purpose is the video, for Google to show it as a video result. A product page where the video is one of many images usually isn’t one. For videos worth ranking, we create dedicated watch pages with the video at the top, a description, a transcript and links to the products; for the rest, we accept they support the page rather than rank on their own.

Part three is structured data. We add VideoObject markup with the name, description, thumbnail URL, upload date, duration and content or embed URL, following Google’s video structured data documentation. Long videos get Clip or SeekToAction markup so Google can show key moments, or chapters if the video is on YouTube. On WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify we build the markup into the templates so new videos get it automatically.

Part four is discovery and loading. A video sitemap lists every watch page and its video details, which helps on large sites. Players must load in a way crawlers can see: the video file or embed present in the page, not injected only after a click. Thumbnails must be crawlable images in a supported format (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG or AVIF) and at least 60 by 30 pixels, with larger preferred. Speed still matters, so we keep the poster image and lazy loading below the fold, as our shoppable video setup does.

Part five is measurement. After changes, we use Search Console’s URL Inspection to request indexing for key pages, then track the video indexing report and video search appearance over the following weeks, along with impressions and clicks on the watch pages. We report what moved and what Google still declines to index, with the reason given.

Video SEO sits inside technical SEO, and Kashif has done technical SEO and WordPress development since 2021, so we change themes and templates directly rather than handing you a list for a developer. For YouTube-hosted video, our YouTube SEO service works on titles, chapters and thumbnails there; the two together cover both places a video can rank.

We keep the markup honest. Structured data describes the video that’s actually on the page; we don’t mark up videos that aren’t there, fake upload dates or invent durations, because Google’s structured data policies treat misleading markup as spam and can remove rich results for the whole site.

Video SEO choices depend on where the video is hosted. Self-hosted video gives you full control of the watch page and markup, but costs bandwidth and needs a good player. YouTube embeds are free and reach YouTube’s audience, but some viewers may stay on YouTube instead of your site. Video platforms such as Vimeo or Wistia sit in between. We recommend a hosting choice per use: product page loops self-hosted and light, how-to videos on YouTube and embedded on watch pages, for example.

Transcripts help too. A transcript under the video gives Google and readers the full text, supports the page’s ranking for the questions the video answers, and helps people who prefer reading.

Large catalogues get templates, not page-by-page work. On a store with hundreds of product videos, we build the markup, thumbnails and sitemap entries into the product and watch page templates, test them on a sample, then roll them out, so every new video gets video SEO automatically without anyone remembering to add it.