Video Schema Markup: How to use this for Better Search Visibility?

Do you know that you can rank twice in Google: one is through your YouTube video and the other is by Blog post. And here the video schema will help you achieve that easily.

In this article, I will walk you through what is a video schema, why you should use it on your website, how to generate the schema code and implement it on the website, and a lot more. So, keep reading the article to master Video SEO.

Table of Contents

What is video schema Markup?

Video schema Markup is structured data that supports search engines to better understand the video content inside an article. It contains all important information about a video embedded in a website like a video title, Video description, duration of the video, upload date, publisher name, and more.

Benefits of Video Schema Markup

Videos schema helps search engines to index quickly and gives proper visibility to your videos in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Google is constantly trying to develop its AI to understand the video content and video schema helps in it as you explicitly provide video details like the video title, description, Video length, Upload date, Thumbnail URL, etc. This allows your videos to appear in Google search results, Google Images, video search results, and Google Discover.

Key Benefits:

• Google understands videos much better than plain text.
• Videos will show in SERPs when you embed a video on the website.
• You will rank twice in Google: One in the video carousel & one as the Blog post.
• Higher Click through rate (CTR) with two results.

What to Include in Video Schema Markup?

A video schema must contain some Required properties to validate, but you can also add some extra Recommended properties to it.

Required properties	Recommended properties
Video Title	Publisher
Description	Publisher Logo URL
Upload date	regions allowed
Thumbnail URL	Expires
embed URL	Transcript
Video Duration	interaction statistics

Property Details:

• Video Title: Include your target keyword in the title for SEO purposes.
• Video Description: Add the first two lines of your YouTube video or a short description.
• Upload date: Find this in your YouTube dashboard.
• Thumbnail URL: Use the following format for YouTube thumbnails:

  https://img.youtube.com/vi/<insert-youtube-video-id-here>/maxresdefault.jpg

• Content URL: The link where the user can publicly access the video.
• Embedded URL: The Blog post URL where the video is embedded.
• Duration: An important metric for search engines; always include this.
• Transcript: Helps search engines understand the video better than the limited description field.

How to Generate Video schema code for websites?

To generate Video schema, you can use an online tool called Schema Markup Generator by TechnicalSEO. Select the Video option and fill up the required video details in the form.

After generating the code, validate it in Google’s Rich Result Test Tool. Once validated, you can paste the schema code into your blog post (HTML section for Blogger, or via a plugin for WordPress).

How to add Schema Data in WordPress Without Plugin?

Follow these steps to add schema to your WordPress website without any extra plugins:

1. Go to WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Theme Editor.
2. Open the header.php file and search for the </head> tag.
3. Paste the following PHP code just above the </head> tag:

   <?php
   $schema = get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'schema', true);
   if(!empty($schema)) {
       echo $schema;
   }
   ?>

4. In your blog post editor, click the three-dot menu > Preferences > Panels and turn on Custom Fields.
5. In the Custom Fields section, enter "schema" as the name and paste your JSON-LD code into the value field.
6. Click "Add Custom Field" and update your post.

How to Check If Video Schema Markup Was Implemented?

You can check implementation in two ways:

1. Rich Result Test Tool: Paste your blog post URL into the tool and look for "Video" in the detected items.
2. Google Search Console: Go to the **Enhancement** tab > **Video**. It will show a list of posts with valid video schema.

Will YouTube Count Views of an Embed Videos on a Website?

Yes, YouTube counts views of embedded videos if these conditions are met:

• Users play the video for at least 30 seconds.
• The video is not embedded with autostart.

Did you already implement video schema on your website? Let me know in the comments down below. 👇

---