One of the more widely used components of the Liveclicker Video Commerce Platform is the capability to launch branded video SEO sites featuring interactive product or how-to videos. Here’s a screenshot from Canadian Tire, followed by several additional examples:
The way I describe Liveclicker Video SEO sites is that “they’re similar to branded YouTube channels, except with greater brand control, more SEO capabilities, and enhanced SEO performance relative to what many retailers can achieve on their product detail pages (PDPs).”
Am I right or wrong?
I’ve observed that my claim polarizes some retailers; generally the issue springs up around the potential siphoning of video SEO value from product detail pages to non-product pages containing interactive video, that direct to PDPs. Thus, if the goal is to drive someone to a PDP, introducing a video SEO site adds an additional ‘click’ on the purchase path.
Now, to be sure, I always advise clients to do whatever they can to optimize video SEO on their product pages – a no-brainer is to submit Google Video Sitemaps for those pages so that video thumbs can appear in universal search results in Google that direct right to the PDPs. Liveclicker helps with this by automatically generating feeds for the sitemaps.
Still, the reality for 90% of retailers is that it rarely is possible to optimize PDPs entirely for video SEO. And when I say ‘video SEO’ I’m referring to holistic video SEO, of which video sitemaps are just one of many components (albeit an important one). So why do so many retailers struggle with PDP video SEO? Simple: because video SEO comes with its own set of demands that are often at odds with the overall PDP page design. There are frequently technical, design, and organizational issues that throw up huge barriers to achieving PDP video SEO. In these cases, having a Video SEO site is a perfect solution:
- They’re branded to look just like the retail site, even at the retailer’s domain, but hosted entirely by Liveclicker
- Video player presentation consistent with SEO best practices (player on the page, 1 video per page, page layout easy to crawl)
- Feature rich video metadata very few PDP designers would ever dream of including on the PDP design – for example, video transcripts, video titles, video descriptions. All of these make video content more discoverable, and help generate additional organic search traffic outside those results generated through universal search (video thumbnails in search listings on Google).
- Video category pages with descriptions
- Automated video sitemap generation and submission – no requirement for internal IT team involvement
- Page source optimized for video, including page title, meta tags (minor contributor, admittedly), video properties
- Not to mention some of the non-SEO benefit, such as better brand control over page element presentation, integrated internal video search, custom playlists, branded players, not showing competitor videos, etc.
In short, video SEO sites contribute a significant chunk of value for the vast majority of retailers – whether or not video sitemaps are being generated for PDPs.
