I have evidence that product videos are hurting our rankings - How do I hide them!?
-
We normally rank between #1-3 for long-tail product related keywords in our industry.
Then we saw our rankings drop when we added product videos to some of our product pages.
My hypothesis was that for most ecommerce-related queries, Google has a certain aesthetic that they are going for in the SERP's. They like to show video listings somewhere in the middle of the first page.. not as one of the first 3 results.
- Product page
- Product page
- Google shopping results
- Product page
- Video Result on product page
- Video Result on product page
- Product page
I did an experiment by removing the product videos from a selection of our product pages and as soon as they were reindexed w/o the video we saw an average of a 3 spot jump in rankings!
Since the product videos have actually helped on-site conversion rate.. we'd like to keep them on the product pages but hide them from being indexed by Google.
Is there a safe way to do this? Is it possible to use an i-frame, or will Google still see the video on the page and index it as such.
Thanks for any advice!
-
Hi Charlie,
so - first of all, are you actually losing any traffic as a result of lower rankings? More often than not, while video results may appear lower down in the page to fit in with an aesthetic model - they get a higher click through rate. If you are retaining or increasing overall traffic for those keywords in-spite of lower rankings, then you are actually in a better position than you were before.
The reason for wanting to get higher up in the SERPs is to get more traffic, but if you can get high click through's in 5th with a video than in 1st without - then 5th position is more beneficial. This feels counter-intuitive, but with the expansion of rich snippets and personalised search - we need to start thinking much wider than just rankings. Rankings are only as good as the traffic they provide.
If you are desperate to lose the video rich snippets (which feels like it would be a step backwards), then you could try one of a few things:
- As you mention, use an Iframe to embed. Google probably wont index it (though it's not unheard of!)
- Hide the video with CSS and then have it appear in a lightbox player with a JS trigger.
- Put the video on a separate page and aim to get two results for the same term (one video and one non-video). NB - this is basically self cannibalisation and could backfire, so I wouldn't recommend it, but it might be worth a try.
Google are doing a lot of tests at the moment and are shifting things around in the SERPs based on rich snippets and content type as much as "relevancy". The model of "higher up = better" doesn't really apply any more and so, in your position i would be inclined to hold tight and see where things go in the next few months. If you're getting product video rich snippets, you're probably in a good position and building more links to the pages may help them to appear higher up and with the rich snippets. Its really not clear how things will end up looking in the not too distant future and I would advise against taking a short term strategy to increase rankings if you're not actually losing a significant amount of traffic.
Hope that's helpful,
Phil
-
I would try a little experiment and try hosting a video on youtube and linking to it. I have seen videos on youtube in the past get a preference and it may work for you instead of self hosting.
Even if it's against your business model to use youtube, the experiment would be wonderful for the community to see if your listings would be affected with a self hosted or YT hosted video
-
We created the videos ourselves and are self-hosting.
All videos have a unique title
-
are the videos identical to other videos that are being used by other people?
Did you give them a unique title?
Do you have the videos on youtube?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do i rank for 1000 keywords?
i have dr 25 and 200 referring domains and ranking for 90 kws in usa. i saw this trend that if you rank for more kws then chances are that you can rank for those high traffic kws in 1 to 5 positions. what i mean is that it increases your odds ? possible answer1 :increase dr and da both and ur and pa ( ahrefs and moz) i know pagerank matters but these are some metrics we can look at for right now possible answer 2 : get a lot of backlinks maybe from same site but how does my backlinks can help me to rank for 1000 kws so that i can have at least 100 kws to rank in position 1 to 5? detailed answers will defi be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam09schulz0 -
Keywords for product title
Hi, I am trying set the product title for my product that I sell online, I have more than 300 products, I am now doing keywords research, any suggestion of the monthly search volume I should aim for each keyword? I just started and selling engagement rings
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | up8772910 -
How to rank a product page
Hello, I have a product page and just did a little introduction ( 5 lines of text) but I have the feeling this is not enough for google. What is the solution ? Is it to increase the amount of content even though it is not going to be user friendly ? Or will google look at the product page I link too and take into account the content on those subpages to boost my "pillar / product page". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
SERP Ranking
Hi everyone, I'm struggling to figure out why our website has dramatically changed and is ranking far worse than ever. We were top for around 10 keywords, and had over 4 high traffic keywords in position 1. I think the website needs updating (as it's magento 1.7), and that the competition is increasing. Taking our eye off the ball has been a huge mistake. Could anyone advise on what the next steps would be to start increasing to a better serp rank? These two are own main ranking pages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mg33dev
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/budget-roller-banner.html Any advice or pointers would be absolutely awesome. Thanks0 -
Would adding and abbreviation to a title hurt?
I have been trying to figure this out- https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/what-should-i-do-with-old-e-commerce-item-pages I added n/a to the end of the page titles so I could figure out how these pages were performing. Since I added them my organic traffic has seemed to have dropped. It has only been a few days so maybe it is an anomaly. Everything else has stayed the same, would this cause an organic traffic drop?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Copyright Theft and Google Rankings
Here is another tough one we've been dealing with. We publish a niche book. For a decade we kept the information offline (no e-books). However, it was widely scanned and reproduced online. We've filed dozens of DMCA complaints over the years, but have found trying to rid the internet entirely of these infringing pages to be futile. We get 1 closed and find 3 more. Two years ago we decided to put the information online ourselves, to generate an official community for our work it instead of "fighting it". We built a full site with hundreds of pages from the book for readers to use, free. Google indexed us, and we followed basic SEO... But in spite of a prime aged domain and a lot of links, we are literally BURIED in google. There are dozens of complete garbage spam sites that rank way higher than us. I understand ranking takes time, and the niche is competitive. But the low quality landing pages that are ranking above us is just too confusing. We fear our work has been indexed by google so much over the years on other sites they will never connect it to us. We'll always be buried on page 14 as another scrape. What would you do to correct this for a client? Could you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetBit0 -
A question of rankings (with actual domains)
Working with the main site featured in this Open Site Explorer comparison (you'll need a pro account to view this), and have been for quite some time. Recently we've slid behind Ebay (huge brand, I get it), but the other competitors don't really make sense to me. Main phrase is pontoon boats, and maybe I'm too close to this, but we seem to be in the best shape overall in terms of the domain, the page itself, and even our social media is pretty successful (we're closing in on 5,000 likes and have a pretty engaged audience). More internal linking is an opportunity, but I'd like another set of eyes (or several for that matter) to weigh in on opinions. I'm a bit stumped. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetvantageMarketing0 -
Ranking stuck
Hello, I have a client with whom we are doing all the "right" things. We have a blog we add relevant content to once a week, we post on facebook, google+, twitter. We have stumbleupon and tumblr links. We have nice high pr links from local non-profits whom we sponsor for charity events. We are in the local citation sites and have 5 real reviews (working on more) But we are stuck anywhere from page 4 to page 2 for most of our keywords, which are all insurance related in the Gainesville area. I would love to hear some fresh ideas! http://dukeinsuranceagency.com , thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webzenz0