Podcast: Video SEO, Generating Key Moments in This Video, and Video Schema
In the latest episode of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer, I talked about some basics of video SEO, but also discussed how to get Key Moments In This Video in the search results. I go over generating Video Schema and a show you a good site for generating schema markup code. As an extra bonus, I also show an example of a website that has a featured snippet but it cloaking their page.
Here is the full transcript from this podcast episode:
Bill Hartzer(00:01):
Hi, this is Bill Hartzer, and this is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer, for April 29th, 2021. And today I’m going to talk a little bit about videos doing some optimization and a couple of different options here,
Bill Hartzer (00:20):
Or we’re actually doing some video audits
Bill Hartzer(00:27):
I’ve talked a little bit before about optimizing videos and so forth and, and there’s a lot of SEO, you know, things that you can do, but there’s a new feature is a feature that I think that is starting to show up in the search results. And I’ve noticed it a little bit more often. I’m going to give you an example in particular and I’m, if you’re listening, you’ll probably have to just listen through and on the podcast. I do have, I am doing this on video and my, all my videos and all my podcasts, actually. So all my podcasts are actually also videos that I put on the YouTube channel. So if you are listening on maybe desktop or something, you might want to go actually and see the video and do it that way and subscribe that way. But regardless, I think there’s some good information here that that you
Bill Hartzer (01:29):
Can listen to
Bill Hartzer(01:32):
And, and gain from this. So that said, I’m going to share my screen and
Bill Hartzer (01:42):
Yeah,
Bill Hartzer(01:42):
Move a few things out of the way. And so this is we’re working right now at the Google search results. And in this particular case, this is a B2B business to business type of search where steam as a service. And this is a good example because
Bill Hartzer (02:04):
It’s a B2B keyword
Bill Hartzer(02:06):
Phrase and there’s not a lot of searches for this per month. So it’s, it’s interesting that this feature in Google is showing up on desktop. And typically it shows up on the search results for mobile, but they rolled this out maybe in 2019 or so for mobile. And then now we’re seeing it on, on the desktop search results. And so something you’d probably want to add to your videos. So steam is a service we have here, the search results. And
Bill Hartzer (02:44):
This is
Bill Hartzer(02:45):
Interesting because the first search result is obviously Google ad. Second result is a, what we call a featured snippet. So this featured snippet in particular is interesting because this company is cloaking and which is against Google’s guidelines. We meaning that when you click on the search result which is a featured search result, you actually are redirected to another page. And that is against Google’s guidelines. When you click on this result, you need to be, you need, we as visitors as, as we expect to go to the page, we click on it. We don’t expect to be taken to some other page. I investigate this in particular and that page still exists, but they decided to do something weird. And by weird, I mean, adding some code that takes video, takes people to the homepage when you click on it. And again, it’s how are we against Google’s guidelines?
Bill Hartzer(03:49):
And they could actually for cooking, they probably get a manual option and the whole site will be penalized as a result. So you probably don’t want to do that, but with scroll down the search results, though, we’ll start, we’ll see we have a few search results for steam as a service, then we have some videos. The first video actually is from Mira America company limited. And we’ll put it uploaded back in January, 2020. So, but what you see Google is actually showing. So a blue box, which is pretty big, pretty prominent. And at the fact is right under the video it’s as five key moments in this video and what it shows is five different different excerpts, if you will, or five different moments in the video as they describe it 29 seconds and one minute and 49 seconds, two minutes and five seconds and so forth.
Bill Hartzer(04:53):
Okay. And the video. So you could actually click on that. New would bring you right to that point in the video. Now I started to investigate fairly recently, you know, how this particular company or this video got this snippet. And it’s interesting is because, you know, or this call-out now, if you notice that there’s two more videos here and it’s the box is not a large it’s just, there’s also for these others three key moments of this video, the first one. And there’s also four key moments in this particular video, but like I said, Google actually makes this larger. So the users are, you know, would tend to click on this particular video. Most likely, probably more even, even because they probably more, because they have this call-out since they, since these other ones have it, these these other videos might be more relevant.
Bill Hartzer(05:57):
But again, people may probably cook on this because it’s called out and has this blue box. Now, if we look particularly at the video itself, okay. Now normally when, if you want to get these particular if you want to get these particular call-outs key moments in the video, you would do w do what I’m going to show you in a minute, which is call out those times and decide for yourself, okay, what are the key moments and at, and so forth. Now, one of the key moments here, this particular video is that two Oh five Armstrong as a fi a fifth generation family. I was taking note of that because if we look at this, okay. At two Oh five here, and this, I turn on the closed cat, they’re not getting that phrase from the Google, from the coast. Let me turn that off.
Bill Hartzer(07:01):
They’re actually getting it from hacks. It appears they’re getting it from text that’s in the video itself. Okay. That’s an, essentially an overlay in the video. Okay. So that indicates to me right there, that, that shows in particular that Google is probably reading that text in the video, which is pretty interesting to me. Okay. We know Google reads text in images, and we know for Google my business, there are, you know, they read that text there in, in images, but for example, a sign, okay, they’ll be able to read the sign and the video, or rather good Google my business. If you upload a photo of a location or a restaurant and the restaurant sign, they’ll be able to re you know, they do read that too. If there’s a, if there is a sign in the video, for example, or in the image, rather, same thing with the video, this is, this is new to me, but this is kind of proof if you will.
Bill Hartzer(08:14):
The Google actually reads that because the fact that they’re not getting it from the description, and normally what they recommend is to do this when you edit your video. Okay. In your video description is to add the key moments. Okay. And I’ve added here, this particular video, I’ve added one, two, three, four, five, six different key moments. And when I edited it and when I edited it, okay. In particular, when I edited the video, that description, I just put in to colon forties space companies merging and rebranding, that could actually be on the other side. It doesn’t matter where that is, but when you save it instantly becomes a link and Google or YouTube essentially makes these links and will jump people there. So when this video is then read on, or, you know, if Google looks at the video again, that they actually will see those key moments and we’ll actually pull fully get that, those key moments in there.
Bill Hartzer(09:34):
Okay. So that’s how you actually get them is you edit your description from now on. I’m going to actually be doing that. And all my videos, this particular video itself, as I talk about different subjects for different topics, I’m going to be adding as I go through and do the transcription and so forth. I’m going to actually be adding these as well to all my videos from now on, I may go back and to other videos and do that, do this as well. So that said, I also want to talk a little bit on another subject that’s related is once you have done that video I do recommend transcribing it. So, you know, use the company rev.com or something like that, or, or just transcribing it by listening to it. There’s different options for transcription. What I do recommend though, is transcribing it.
Bill Hartzer(10:32):
And then what I do personally is I do a blog post. So in this case, once this video is recorded, I will transcribe it. I will go through the video and pick out some key moments and I’ll add those key moments. But then when I actually make the blog post with the transcription I’ll and an, a screenshot of that. So actually and put that embed the video in the blog post, and then I’ll add video schema. So technical seo.com has a schema markup generator, 10 of us ceo.com was by the company Merkel. This is actually free. They have a schema markup generator, there’s different types of schema code. You can from an AR article law, posting bright crime. Thank you page. And so some, you know, local business, but let’s talk about a video schema. We want to add this, we want to fill this out as much as we can.
Bill Hartzer(11:32):
And then once it’s filled out, like I put in the, you know, in that particular case to put in, you know, put in the the name of the video. I put in, put in the all of that text in there. I also actually did add that particular text as well and put that into the description. And so what happens is once you fill this out and you put the, you know, the, the upload date and put all this, you know, and, and, and, and everything about the video, it automatically generates the schema markup code. So if you’re doing like a blog post in WordPress, you actually just, once you take the embed code from YouTube, put it in the blog post, then right after that, or somewhere in the video, you also want to copy that this Java script. Okay. And then put that also, I recommend putting it right next to the or right after the embedded video code
Bill Hartzer(12:40):
That code. Okay. This code here that I’m showing here, I thought hop how I, it’s not going to show up in the, in the, in the S in, is not going to actually show up in the blog post itself. Okay. Because it is JavaScript. However, what it’ll do is it’ll, it’ll give the search engines more information about the video and there’s more likely that they will pick up on things. Like the thumbnail, like the upload date, it just, and the description and the, yeah. It’s Mo it’s just best practice to actually add it in there. It’ll, it probably will help you. And so that’s one of the other things that I add, obviously when you’re adding a video you know I try and add certain number of tags to, but seven tags. If it’s rebrand, I’m going after a keyword, rebranding or business.
Bill Hartzer(13:40):
I want that at the beginning of the, I want it in there. I do want in an in description. But again, my point here today is to understand that this key moments where you can get these actual call-out ALS are important to add in the description. For some reason, this particular video got those call-outs, but I’m not sure where they’re coming from. So, but we know because Google has told us that you can put them in the description and that’s where they pull it from. So that said that don’t have any other particular points I want to make today. However thanks for listening this afternoon. This is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer for April 29th, 2021. Thanks again for listening. And we will see you online.