Step by Step to Properly Setup Video SEO in WordPress

If you wish to learn the proper way to setup Video SEO in WordPress, then you need this.

What is Video SEO?

Contents

Video SEO is simply optimizing your video to be indexed and rank on the search engine results pages for relevant keyword searches. There are many optimization strategies to give your videos a higher chance of ranking. This can help you get more traffic from your video content back to your WordPress website.

There’s a lot you can do to optimize your videos before you embed them in your WordPress blog posts, like choosing the best video hosting. The best way to do this is by adding a video sitemap to WordPress.

What is Video XML Sitemap?

A video sitemap is an XML sitemap that has information about the video content on your site.

This can help you generate rich snippets that appear in the Google video search results, and increase your blog traffic across the board. By creating a video sitemap, Google and other search engines will index your posts with the embedded video content. That way, your video can rank in the search engines and bring more traffic to your posts.

What is WordPress Video Sitemap Plugin

WordPress Video Sitemap Plugin is used to detect when a video is embedded in your blog content, and add that to the sitemap, so search engines like Google, bing can prioritize it.

How to Setup Video SEO Sitemap in WordPress

There are lots of plugins you can use to setup your Video SEO sitemap in WordPress. So we will guide you with the following SEO plugins.

Video SEO Sitemap in WordPress with RankMath SEO

One of the best SEO tools is Rankmath SEO with over 1 million users on WordPress. First thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Before we begin, you’ll need to ensure that Rank Math’s Schema Module has been enabled on your website by navigating to Rank Math > Dashboard in your WordPress admin area.

Edit Your Post or Page

To add the Video Schema Type first head over to the edit page for that post, by clicking Edit

Open Rank Math In The Gutenberg Sidebar

You can open Rank Math in the Gutenberg sidebar by clicking on the Rank Math SEO icon for the page.

Or click the three vertical dots in the top right-hand corner of the edit page and select Rank
Navigate to the Schema Settings for This Post/Page
Then go to the Schema Settings by clicking on the Schema tab and click on Schema Generator.

Open Rank Math’s Schema Builder

Find the Video Schema from the list and click on Use to open the Schema Builder.

if you wish to add custom Video Schema or adjust the auto-generated Video Schema

Video Schema Type Setup & Available Options

Headline

Write a headline that comprises the video name. You can also make use of variables if you have mentioned them in the post title.

Description

Enter the description of the video in this field. You can also use the variables to create a dynamic description of the service.

Shortcode

If you wish to show the Video Schema on the frontend as well, then you should paste the shortcode from this field into your post where you want the review to be displayed.

Upload Date

Enter the date when the video was uploaded. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Content URL

Enter the URL to the actual video.

Embed URL

Enter the URL of the embedded video.

Duration

Enter the duration of the video in ISO 9601 format.

Video Thumbnail

Enter the URL of the video thumbnail. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Width

Enter the width of the video file. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Height

Enter the height of the video file.This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Is Family Friendly Video

Mark the video as family-friendly by enabling this option. If it is not a family-friendly video then you can simply disable this option. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Video Category

Enter the category of the video. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Video Tags

Enter the video tags here.

Rating

Enter the Rating score for the video. This option is available only in the Rank Math PRO.

Video SEO Sitemap in WordPress with AIOSEO

After the plugin is activated, you’ll have a new All in One SEO menu item in your WordPress dashboard.

Navigate to All in One SEO » Sitemaps.

On the home screen, make sure that sitemaps are enabled. Click the ‘Enable Sitemap’ slider to turn on sitemaps.
After that, select the ‘Video Sitemap’ menu option at the top of the screen.

Next, click the ‘Activate Video Sitemap’ button to enable the video sitemap module.
Once you’ve done that, you can view your video sitemap by clicking the ‘Open Video Sitemap’ button.

The index page will list all of your available video sitemaps.

When you click on the sitemap link, it’ll show the list of available video content.

You can further configure your video sitemap settings in the ‘Video Sitemap Settings’ box.

The default settings will be enough for most WordPress blogs, however, you can adjust these depending on your video content needs.

The most common change webmasters make is adjusting the ‘Post Types’ and ‘Taxonomies’ settings.

Make sure you click ‘Save Changes’ if you’ve made any changes to the settings here.

You’ve now successfully added video sitemaps to WordPress, which will improve your video SEO and help you get more traffic from the search engines.

Video SEO Sitemap in WordPress with Yoast SEO

Log in to your WordPress website.
When you’re logged in, you will be in your ‘Dashboard’.

Click on ‘SEO’.
On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on ‘SEO’.

Click on ‘Video SEO’.
The ‘SEO’ settings will expand providing you additional options. Click on ‘Video SEO’.
Your video sitemap can be located by clicking on the blue XML Video Sitemap Link. By default Yoast SEO video sitemaps will end with: video-sitemap.xml.

Should I add the video XML sitemap to Google Search Console?

No, you don’t have to add it separately, because a link to the video sitemap is already included in the XML sitemap index file. Yoast SEO generates the index file. The only thing you have to do is add the link to this index file to Google Search Console. How? Follow the steps in this guide to submit the sitemap to Google and other search engines.
Now that you’ve setup the plugin, adding new posts with videos is of course the first thing you’ll want to do. It’s really very simple.

Video thumbnail

This feature outputs a video thumbnail which Google will display in a Google Video Search. It appears both as an item property for VideoObject and into the video sitemap. If you do not add a custom thumbnail, by default the plugin will use the still shot of the first frame of the video for the thumbnail.

Title and description

The plugin pulles the title and the meta description for the video from the information you add in the Google Preview setting in Yoast SEO. If you haven’t added an SEO title, it will be pulled from the title of the page. Similarly, if you haven’t specified a meta description, the plugin will automatically pull the first couple of lines of the content on the page.

Duration

This features allows you to describe how long the video is. It is outputted as an item property for VideoObject schema and also into the video sitemap. If you do not add one, Video SEO will attempt to calculate it.