How to do Video SEO in WordPress with Yoast Video SEO plugin

A while ago one of our friends, Joost de Valk, famous for his WordPress SEO plugin reached out to us with regards to trying out the beta version of his plugin. This new plugin of his was an extension for his SEO plugin focusing mainly on Videos. We love to try out new things to see how it can benefit our business. Well, this one worked magic. We tried the Yoast Video SEO extension on our List25 site and quickly we found ourselves ranking high for some crazy keywords. It was because of our Video SEO. In this article, we will show you how to do video SEO in WordPress with Yoast Video SEO plugin.

Before we go any further, we should clarify that while WordPress SEO by Yoast is a free plugin, this Video SEO module costs $69. We were among the handful few beta testers of this plugin.

What does Video SEO module do?

It automatically creates a video sitemap on your site which indexes every post that has an embedded video. It adds MediaRSS enhancements to your RSS feed. It shows you the snippet with an actual video. It adds Facebook OpenGraph tags on your video pages. Oh, and it supports all popular video platforms (i.e Youtube, Vimeo, Blip, Dailymotion etc).

If you are a video blogger, or a blogger that likes to embed videos in their posts, then this is a MUST have plugin for you. In our months of testing this plugin, we saw our articles ranking higher and getting a higher click through rate. This is because video results are easier to rank for. There is not much competition because other webmasters have not jumped on this. Well, this is your opportunity to maximize the benefits for yourself.

How to take advantage of Yoast Video SEO plugin?

First thing you need to do is purchase the Video SEO plugin. Yes, it does cost $69, but it is well worth the investment.

Note: You MUST have WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin installed for this module to work.

Once you have purchased the video SEO plugin, simply install and activate that plugin. Upon activation, you will see a new menu item shown under the SEO menu called Video SEO.

Once you have entered the license key, you will see a new option on this page to include video sitemap.

Your screen may have more custom post types if you have more post types. Select the ones you want to index and hit save settings. Then make sure you press the Re-Index Videos button.

This plugin will then go through all of your selected post types (posts, pages etc) and find the embedded videos. Those videos will then be index in your sitemap.

Now when you edit your posts, you will see a snippet preview like this: