Definition

Video SEO covers the HTML, metadata, structured data and hosting requirements that determine whether a video is indexed by Google and how it can appear in video-related search features.

Google indexes videos that live on a dedicated watch page with a single prominent video, a static thumbnail, and supported file types such as MP4 or WebM. VideoObject structured data and video sitemaps help Google understand the video's title, description, duration, thumbnail URL and content location, and unlock features like video previews, key moments and live badges.

Examples

• Tutorial site

  A coding tutorial site hosts each lesson on its own watch page with a single embedded MP4, descriptive title, transcript and VideoObject structured data. The videos appear in Google's video carousel with thumbnails and durations.

• News broadcaster

  A news broadcaster marks live streams with BroadcastEvent structured data so the stream displays a 'Live' badge in Google Search while it is on air.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Video SEO best practices

Related terms

• Schema Markup
  Structured data added to a page that describes its content to search engines in a machine-readable format.
• Rich Results
  Search results enhanced with visual or interactive elements — review stars, prices, FAQs, recipe images — generated from a page's structured data.
• Sitemap
  A file, usually XML, that lists URLs on a site so search engines can discover and crawl them more efficiently.
• JSON-LD
  A JSON-based syntax for embedding structured data in a script tag, used to describe a page's content to search engines and other parsers.
• Indexing
  The process by which a search engine analyses a fetched page and stores information about it so the page can later be returned in search results.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• Schema Markup Generator
• SEO Audit