Compatibility:

WebSite X5 Pro since version 2020.2


Videos have become a crucial element for any online communication strategy because they bring more traffic on the website and engage more than other kinds of contents. Still, it's important not to forget to apply all the SEO best practices to videos as well.


There are basically two aspects you must pay attention to in order to make your videos more appealing for search engines:

  1. creating a sitemap.xml
  2. using structured data


Creating the sitemap 

The sitemap is a xml file which search engines use to find and understand the contents of our websites. It reports information about the latest contents, which crawler are likely to miss during their automatic scanning. It is necessary to create an additional sitemap for videos or to remember adding all the details about them in the website sitemap.


Structured data

Structured data can then describe the contents of a video even more carefully, so that Google is more likely to report it both in its combined and video search results in richer formats than the simple Blue Links. 


As Google itself puts it in its Video best practices, by adding few basic information the video will be reported on the SERP only with a thumbnail and a link:



On the other hand, by adding more information thanks to the structured data, the video will be displayed on the SERP in richer boxes reporting the preview, duration, details, etc. 

 

In WebSite X5

In WebSite X5, you can work both on the sitemap.xml and on the structured data as far as your videos are concerned. 


As far as the sitemap goes, please see: How to work with the sitemap.xml file of the website.


As far as structured data is concerned, you simply need to go to Step 1 - Website Settings > SEO and activate the Add Structured Data option. Please remember that the details you add in the SEO section of the Video Object are used both for the sitemap.xml (in case you activated it) and for the structured data markup.