Vimeo adds structured data to all public videos to improve Google Search visibility

Vimeo, a popular video hosting platform (obviously not as popular as YouTube), has added structured data to all of its publicly available videos on its platform. Vimeo said the SEO changes they made to the videos will give “your videos the best opportunity to appear for relevant searches.”

Google worked with Vimeo? Vimeo wrote that they worked with Google as an “early adopter of Google Search’s best practices for video players” to provide Google with “additional context about your videos.” This will help Vimeo surface those videos in Google search and take advantage of the video rich results, like displaying key moments for videos in Google Search by adding chapters and timestamps to video structured data.

Google’s video best practices. The video best practices are not exclusive to Vimeo or “early adopters.” These best practices are published by Google over here for anyone who hosts videos to read and adopt on their web sites or platforms.

The video best practices cover:

• Help Google find your videos
• Ensure your videos can be indexed
• Allow Google to fetch your video content files
• Enable specific video features
• Remove, restrict, or update your videos as needed

Steps to take in Vimeo. Vimeo said there is really nothing specific you need to do to take advantage of these SEO changes, outside of making your videos public. Vimeo wrote “all you need to do is make sure your videos are listed as public.” “Our technology will handle the rest,” the video platform said. That means the video platform will ensure the videos are (1) indexable, (2) that your metadata is optimized, (3) and your chapters are visible to Google Search for key moments.

Vimeo’s SEO advice. Despite Vimeo handling this by default for you, Vimeo posted some tips for you when you are uploading your videos, naming them and adding descriptions and other data. That advice includes:

• Add chapters to your videos: Google doesn’t only review the title, but also the titles used for each chapter – which means adding chapters can help users discover the part of your video that is most relevant to their search.
• Choose your titles wisely: The title is displayed alongside your video thumbnail in search results. While it’s great to have a unique and catchy name for your video, it’s also important to keep your title descriptive using keywords most relevant to your audience’s searches.
• Research the best keywords: If you want new people to discover your video, it makes sense to describe it in the terms that people are searching for.

Note, that chapters are only available on the Pro plan or above or Vimeo.

Why we care. If you are using Vimeo for hosting, distributing and marketing you videos – you can now rest assured that Vimeo is taking SEO and Google search rich results seriously. If you have not used Vimeo and been using YouTube, you may want to try Vimeo out now that they have implemented video SEO tips from Google.

Of course, keep an eye on your video analytics to see if these changes impact any of your past videos. It is possible that Vimeo videos might gain more visibility and thus have a positive impact on Vimeo hosted videos and potentially a negative impact on other video platforms going forward. Either way, we know YouTube and most SEOs implement video SEO best practices and now you can lump in Vimeo to that list.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.