Vimeo Video SEO Case Study

Published on January 25, 2023

About Vimeo

Vimeo is an all-in-one video answer with greater than 260 million customers and 350k new movies added
per day with a mission to allow skilled high quality video for all.

Challenge

Vimeo’s prospects wanted to independently implement and handle video SEO greatest practices, together with
including structured information to their very own web sites, submitting sitemaps, calling indexing APIs,
and extra—all of those require experience and are onerous to scale. Additionally, Vimeo’s
Chapters characteristic (video segments notated by time markers) wasn’t enabled to floor on Google Search.

In 2022, Vimeo addressed these challenges by adopting Google’s best practices,
which included implementing VideoObject
structured information and making use of the very best practices to their video participant, in order that Vimeo prospects
may benefit from options like Key Moments
with out further work.

Allowing video indexing at scale

To optimize indexing and provides video embeds the very best alternative to seem for related searches,
Vimeo adopted Google’s new steering for video gamers that use iframe embeds. The new
indexifembedded
rule paired with noindex permits markup to be attributed by way of embeds. Since
making use of this and VideoObject
markup, Vimeo movies which might be embedded on buyer pages are eligible for indexing, with out
prospects having so as to add markup themselves. This change applies to all embeds of Vimeo’s present
library of 750M+ movies, plus all newly added and embedded movies going ahead.

If you are the developer of an embedded video participant like Vimeo, you can even assist your prospects
reap the advantages of video search and an improved Google Search presentation. All you must
do is the next:

1. Add VideoObject structured data
   to every supply participant web page (that is the web page that is internet hosting the participant, which customers will embed
   in an iframe elsewhere).
2. Add the indexifembedded
   rule along with the robots noindex rule to the web page the embedUrl
   property factors to in order that solely movies which might be embedded in your buyer pages might be
   eligible for Search indexing:

3. Wait for Googlebot to recrawl the affected pages.

Enabling Key Moments with structured information

When Key Moments are surfaced in Google
Search, the video wealthy result’s enhanced additional with an expandable and scrollable time bar
with labeled segments.

“One of Vimeo’s objectives is to make video as highly effective as attainable, and that extends to serving to
anybody obtain attain and publicity with out having to be an engineer or SEO professional.
Unlocking the data inside video content material is a part of this focus and Key Moments makes this
attainable proper from a buyer’s search outcomes web page, enhancing the worth of their movies.”
— Alex Cherny, Sr. Director of Product at Vimeo

To make all Vimeo Chapters eligible to seem as Key Moments on Google Search, Vimeo added
Clip markup to
all of their video host pages. Vimeo additionally carried out Seek markup,
so if a video does not have Vimeo Chapters, Google can mechanically establish Key Moments.

Clicking on a phase takes searchers to the creator’s internet web page with a Vimeo embedded participant,
the place the video begins from the time marker chosen. If you are
the developer of an embedded video participant like Vimeo, you can even
enable Key Moments.

If you are implementing Key Moments for an iframe embed, you will want to develop a way for
the iframe embed to speak the beginning time parameter to the supply video participant. For
instance, you should use a postMessage
JavaScript wrapper to allow this communication. Such a wrapper is not wanted for JavaScript
embeds, as participant controls might be managed on the identical URL web page.