Whether you decide to host your video on YouTube or not, your steps are going to be similar enough.

Here are the three steps required to get started for either type of video hosting:

1) Upload your video using shema.org markup in the page’s HTML code

Google recommends using schema.org to mark up your videos because Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo can all understand that markup. It’s a new on-page markup format that you will use in the HTML editor view of your content/video (as opposed to visual). If you’re unfamiliar with schema.org, I recommend checking out Google to help you understand what it all means as well as this video to hear about schema.org markup right from the Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

2) Use a video XML sitemap.

You’re going to want to download a WordPress plugin in order to get started with a video sitemap. However, most of the popular WordPress plugins only work with YouTube videos. If you have an IT department you can manually code a video sitemap, otherwise there are premium plugins available such as Video SEO for WordPress from yoast that costs $69. It may sound like a lot of money but it is the only plug in out there that is helpful for video snippets so in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge outlay!

3) Submit your video rich snippet to Google Webmaster tools

Login to Webmaster tools and then alert them to your video sitemap. This lets Google know about your video without having to wait for Google to automatically crawl your video page. Submitting a sitemap is easy:

  1. Click “Site Configuration” in the left sidebar of the Webmaster Tools page for that website.
  2. Hit “Sitemaps”.
  3. Click “Add/Test Sitemap” button in the top right-hand corner.
  4. Enter your sitemap into the text box that appears (/system/feeds/sitemap)
  5. Click “Submit Sitemap”.

 

If you are going to host your video, it’s also worth mentioning that you’ll want to make sure it is cached with a content delivery network (CDN) if you think the page will be getting a lot of traffic.

So to conclude video rich snippets are just another way to set your SERP listing apart. As more businesses start to catch on to the benefits of snippets, you’re going to need something in place in order to compete. Getting started with a video rich snippet now is a great way to future proof and get clicks in the meantime.

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