If you want your videos to be discovered by Google on your website, you’ve always had to create something called a video site map. But now, a change that Google is working on will not only allow your videos to be discovered, but let them be discovered everywhere, and without the sitemap.
Why This is a Gift
But before you can understand how great this is, there are two other things you need to know. First is the sheer power of YouTube. When we say things like 200 billion videos were watched online in a month, that takes into account all web properties. YouTube’s share of that is about 43.8%, but 99% of all views found on Google come from YouTube.
I know there’s Bing and there’s still Yahoo, but for your video marketing, the biggest bang for your buck is YouTube, by far. But there’s always been a big problem with YouTube in terms of what they call discoverability, the way people find your video. For one thing, you couldn’t really make a sitemap because there was no way to know where your video actually was in the vast YouTube warehouse.
Was This a Mistake?
But all of a sudden, something has changed over at YouTube and they’re not even talking about it. Over at ReelSeo, their intrepid researchers found an anomaly, something that shouldn’t have been there, namely their videos showing up in places where they should only have shown up if they had a sitemap of their video on YouTube, which is not really possible.
What they found was that Google will index your YouTube video wherever it may be found; on your website or anyone else’s website for that matter. Expect Google to make an announcement about this in the coming months. But for now, it seems that having a video sitemap for a YouTube video is no longer necessary, which greatly simplifies the process of discovering you online.
This means you can spend more time creating great content and less time fiddling with technical junk.
Gift #2 – This is Major!
But there’s more good news out of YouTube. Up until now they have been an organization that couldn’t really decide how they wanted videos to be found. They said that sharing and other social aspects of getting videos seen was their most important metric, but they didn’t act that way. They gave more priority to videos with fake views and fake links and any other fake thing that a black hat marketer could devise for gaming the system.
Well, they’ve now put a stake in the ground and said that the quality of videos and the natural sharing of those videos will, from now on, be the single most important factor in how they help people discover your videos.
Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve been yelling about this to anyone who would listen for at least the last two years. So I’m glad to see them come right out and say it.
We Have a Level Playing Field Now
These two bits of news from YouTube work together to make your life better. Now you can focus on making great content for your audience and worry a lot less about getting found.
Yes, there are still things to know about using Google to help yourself be found for the exact ideas you want to be known for. We teach those simple tactics and strategies in our classes.
But the good news is that we can now work together with YouTube and Google. They both want you to do a better job of communicating with your audience, and when you do they’ll reward you with higher visibility. And then our training will be able to help get you a first page ranking more easily.
Either way, expect video sitemaps to start being phased out over the short term, at least when your videos are hosted at YouTube.
So go make a video your audience wants to see. And if you need a little help, we’ll be here. There are some big helpful announcements coming soon, so stay tuned!