If you haven’t noticed lately, when you search for a keyword on Google, below the website results will be a set of video results. These aren’t there by accident and unless you are using video sitemaps as part of your overall SEO strategy, your video won’t appear there either. It seems that people love to watch video, even if it is poorly produced or offers very little information, and that is a niche that you need to take advantage of in order to get more clicks on your site.

Video sitemaps are encoded into your website, telling Google to come take a look at what you’ve got and start showing it in the results for particular keywords. They consist of the video itself, the associated URL, keywords, a title, and a thumbnail image. By providing all of these in your sitemap to Google, you will begin to see your video pop up in the results.

This kind of technology picks up all types of video formats, although .mpg, .mpeg, and .mp4 are considered the most widely used at this time. If you want your video to be watched by as many people as possible, then make sure you have converted it to the proper format.

Utilizing video sitemaps as part of your marketing and SEO strategy is becoming almost mandatory. A link to your website is great, but a video of you (or an actor) telling a story is much better. Because so many people now have some sort of high-speed Internet access, video technology is much more accessible and can bring in potential customers that you never knew were out there.

A great way to get started in having video working for you is to hire a company that specializes in this kind of marketing. They can help you get your videos together, mapped, and in the results. Contact us for more details!