Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I Focus on Video Schema or a Video Sitemap First
-
Hey all,
I'm working on a website that is soon going to launch a video hub that contains over 500 videos. I'm interested in ensuring that the videos show up on the SERPs page in the highest position possible. I know Google recommends that you have on-page schema for your videos as well as an XML sitemap so they can be indexed for SERP. When I look at schema and the XML video sitemap they seem to communicate very similar kinds of information (Title, Description, Thumbnail, Duration). I'm not sure which one to start with; is it more important to have video schema or a video sitemap?
Additionally, if anyone knows of any good video sitemap generators (free is best, but cheap is okay too) then please let me know. Cursory google searching has just churned up a number of tools that look sketchy.
-
Hi Ajay,
Great question. First off, I think that both a video sitemap and the correct schema optimizations are extremely important in getting your videos to rank. Personally, I would start off with creating a video sitemap and then branch off into utilizing schema. This is just a matter of preference for me because I like to get the foundational elements done first.
In terms of what tools you can use - I know of a few. If your site is in WordPress the Yoast Video SEO plugin has worked well for me in the past. If not, here are some great posts on Video Sitemaps and the best process for creating them.
https://www.distilled.net/blog/video/creating-video-sitemaps-for-each-video-hosting-platform/
https://azwa.1clkaccess.in/blog/video-sitemap-guide-for-vimeo-and-youtube
Hope that helps!
Serge
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Schema.org product offer with a price range, or multiple offers with single prices?
I'm implementing Schema.org, (JSON-LD), on an eCommerce site. Each product has a few different variations, and these variations can change the price, (think T-shirts, but blue & white cost $5, red is $5.50, and yellow is $6). In my Schema.org markup, (using JSON-LD), in each Product's Offer, I could either have a single Offer with a price range, (minPricd: $5, maxPrice $6), or I could add a separate Offer for each variation, each with its own, correct, price set. Is one of these better than the other? Why? I've been looking at the WooCommerce code and they seem to do the single offer with a price range, but that could be because it's more flexible for a system that's used by millions of people.
Technical SEO | | 4RS_John1 -
Automate XML Sitemaps
Quick question, which is the best method that people have for automating sitemaps. We publish around 200 times a day and I would like to make sure as soon as we publish it gets updated in the site map. What is the best method of updating a sitemap so it gets updated immediately after it is published.
Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Should Sitemaps be placed in the sub folder they reference?
I have a sitemap-index.xml file in the root. I then have several sitemaps linked to from the index in example.com/sitemaps/sitemap1.xml, example.com/sitemaps/sitemap2.xml, etc. I have seen on other sites that for example a sitemap containing blogs where the blogs are located at example.com/blog/blog1/ would be located at example.com/blog/sitemap.xml. Is it necessary to have the sitemap located in the same folder like this? I would like to have all sitemaps in a single sitemap folder for convenience but not if it will confuse search engines. My index count for URLs in some sitemaps has dropped dramatically in Google Webmaster Tools over the past month or so and I'm not sure if this is having an effect. If it matters, I have all sitemap files, including the index, listed in the robots.txt file.
Technical SEO | | Giovatto0 -
Robots.txt and Multiple Sitemaps
Hello, I have a hopefully simple question but I wanted to ask to get a "second opinion" on what to do in this situation. I am working on a clients robots.txt and we have multiple sitemaps. Using yoast I have my sitemap_index.xml and I also have a sitemap-image.xml I do put them in google and bing by hand but wanted to have it added into the robots.txt for insurance. So my question is, when having multiple sitemaps called out on a robots.txt file does it matter if one is before the other? From my reading it looks like you can have multiple sitemaps called out, but I wasn't sure the best practice when writing it up in the file. Example: User-agent: * Disallow: Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap_index.xml Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap-image.xml Thanks a ton for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :) J
Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission0 -
Should all pagination pages be included in sitemaps
How important is it for a sitemap to include all individual urls for the paginated content. Assuming the rel next and prev tags are set up would it be ok to just have the page 1 in the sitemap ?
Technical SEO | | Saijo.George0 -
Is it worth adding schema markup to articles?
I know things like location, pagination, breadcrumbs, video, products etc have value in using schema markup. What about things like articles though? Is it worth all the work involved in having the pages mark up automatically? How does this effect SEO, and is it worthwhile? Thanks, Spencer
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Hosting sitemap on another server
I was looking into XML sitemap generators and one that seems to be recommended quite a bit on the forums is the xml-sitemaps.com They have a few versions though. I'll need more than 500 pages indexed, so it is just a case of whether I go for their paid for version and install on our server or go for their pro-sitemaps.com offering. For the pro-sitemaps.com they say: "We host your sitemap files on our server and ping search engines automatically" My question is will this be less effective than my installing it on our server from an SEO perspective because it is no longer on our root domain?
Technical SEO | | design_man0 -
How to generate a visual sitemap using sitemap.xml
Are there any tools (online preferably) which will take a sitemap.xml file and generate a visual site map? Seems like an obvious thing to do, but can't find any simple tools for this?
Technical SEO | | k3nn3dy30