Google uses a completely different index for video than it does for web pages.  The upshot of this is that for a high competition search term it can be 50 times easier to rank on page one in blended results than with your web page.

There are a few things to consider.

Google doesn’t yet have a way of working out what your video is about by watching it so having long videos jam full of key words will only be to the detriment of your visitors experience and won’t enhance the indexibility of the video itself.

This means that Google is reliant on meta data to analyse your video’s content.  Make sure that your video has a meta title, description and tagged key words to give an indication of its content.  In terms of YouTube it is also worth noting that the file name of the video that you are uploading can also have an impact.

Your website should already have an xml sitemap and it is worth having a separate sitemap for your videos too.  Although Google will know about all public videos on YouTube it will help the videos hosted on your own site become indexed.

Here is a useful link from Google on how to produce your video sitemap:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80472?hl=en

Remember that Google won’t always show blended results with your videos included in search.  Videos will only appear if Google believes them to be highly relevant to the search term.

For more information on how we can help your search engine performance or to work with us on video please give us a call or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk