Sitemaps help Google and other Search Engines find content on your site. How is this done? By following Google’s Sitemap Protocol. Since videos are a very rich form of content, many web site owners now want to include more information about their video content.
What Does a Normal Sitemap Look Like?
The standard XML Sitemap entry looks something like the following:
<url> <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc> <lastmod>2011-09-07</lastmod> <changefreq>monthly</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url>
An entry like this will be created for each and every page of your site, whether it’s a normal page, a blog post or other custom content.
Adding Video Content to Your Sitemap
To add information about your videos, you will need to include, at a minimum, the video title, a description, a “play page URL” where the video can be viewed, a thumbnail URL and the raw video URL. Without that information, Google will be unable to present your videos in their search results.
This additional information can be added to an existing XML Sitemap, or in a new Sitemap file, whichever you choose.
What Does it Look Like?
The format of the additional video information is as follows:
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/path-to-your-video</loc>
<video:video>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbnail-for-video.jpg
</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Title of Your Video</video:title>
<video:description>A description of your video</video:description>
<video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video-contents.flv
</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">
http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
</video:video>
</url>
There is a long list of additional tags that you can use but since these are the minimum required. You may include as much additional information as you like. For the complete list, you can read Google’s article on Creating a Video Sitemap.
How to Set Up a Video XML Sitemap for WordPress
Now that you know what a Video XML Sitemap is and what it looks like, how do you get one set up for your WordPress blog? We can recommend using the Google XML Sitemap for Videos plugin.
Using this plugin, it’s a simple two-step process to get you going.
The first step is installing the plugin. Once installed and activated you will find a “Video Sitemap” option under the Tools Menu in the WordPress admin area. Going to this page, you will find a button with the text “Generate Video Sitemap.” Clicking this will create the sitemap file.
The second step is informing Google about the new sitemap file. This is done using the Google Webmaster Tools. If you’re not already set up with the Google Webmaster Tools, signing up is free and provides you with lots of tools that you can use to better manage your search engine presence.
Once you get to the Webmaster Tools page, click on the “Site configuration” menu and then select “Sitemaps” under that. On that page, you will find a button labeled “Submit a Sitemap.” Clicking this allows you to enter the name of your sitemap file. Enter the value “sitemap-video.xml” and click on the Submit button. — That’s all there is to it.
XML sitemaps might not help with ranking, though they are part of our natural SEO services; however, they may help with getting content (the right content) indexed by the search engines. Setting up a Video XML Sitemap can get your video content indexed better by Google and the other search engines. And anything you can do to be indexed better by the search engines, is good SEO.
