Stop Hiding Your Videos: A Practical Rich-Results Playbook with Yoast Video SEO

Yoast Video SEO Plugin — How I Turned “Nice Video” into Rich Results and Real Visits

Most sites treat video like decoration: embed, center-align, move on. Search engines don’t. They need structure—what the video is, when it was published, how long it runs, what page it belongs to, and whether the thumbnail is worth showing. The gap between “we embedded a player” and “we earned a rich result” is where traffic leaks.

I rebuilt our video workflow around Yoast Video SEO Plugin and treated each video like its own mini product page: metadata, transcript, thumbnail craft, crawl timing, and performance guardrails. Below is the field note I wish I’d had before uploading our first tutorial. For complements (captions, compression helpers, schema testing tools) I maintain a tiny stack sourced from WordPress Plugins. The mission stays boring on purpose: predictable discovery, consistent click-through, fewer “why didn’t this index?” mysteries. The experiments run under the gplpal umbrella.

What “video SEO” means beyond embedding

• Discoverability: sitemaps that declare episodes, durations, thumbnails, and publication times.
• Comprehension: transcripts and clean titles so search can match queries to moments.
• Eligibility: correct schema to qualify for video carousels and rich results.
• Consistency: one canonical home for a video even if it lives on multiple players.
• Speed: a page that loads without the player blocking Largest Contentful Paint.

I track five signals:

1. Impressions in video-rich surfaces (Search Console)
2. CTR on video-rich results (page-level, not site-wide)
3. Indexing latency (publish → first impression)
4. Average watch time (onsite player analytics)
5. Page performance (LCP and CLS with & without autoplay)

The lifecycle I follow for every video

1) Plan

• Define the search problem in one line: “How to troubleshoot X without special tools.”
• Choose a primary page that will be the canonical home.

2) Produce

• Write for chapters (natural breakpoints).
• Record clean audio first; image quality forgives more than muddy sound.

3) Package

• Title: problem + outcome (“Fix X in 3 Steps”).
• Description: 2–3 lines, outcome first.
• Thumbnail: readable at 160×90; 2–4 words max; high contrast.
• Transcript: human-edited; remove filler, keep specific nouns/verbs.

4) Publish

• Embed once, above the fold or just below the intro.
• Lazy-load the player; use a placeholder image to avoid layout shift.

5) Mark up

• Ensure VideoObject schema with name, description, duration, uploadDate, thumbnailUrl, and contentUrl/embeddedUrl.
• Confirm canonical if video also lives on a platform channel.

6) Promote & monitor

• Fetch as Google (URL inspection) after publish.
• Track impressions and CTR for the parent page and the video rich result.

The 60-minute publishing checklist my team uses

• 0–10 min: Title and description that promise an outcome; write the two-line lead.
• 10–20 min: Generate thumbnail candidates; test legibility at 160×90.
• 20–30 min: Finalize transcript; mark chapters with start times.
• 30–40 min: Embed video; set dimensions; lazy-load; add captions.
• 40–50 min: Fill Yoast Video fields; verify schema preview; confirm video sitemap lists the URL.
• 50–60 min: Publish; inspect URL; request indexing; spot-check in Search Console after a day.

Ops should be calm. If anything feels heroic, your template is missing a rule.

FAQ (practical, not theory)

Do I need a unique page for every video?
If the video answers a distinct query, yes. Otherwise, group related clips into one comprehensive page with chapters.

Should I host videos myself or use a platform?
Use the player that balances performance, control, and analytics for your audience. The key is consistent schema and one canonical home.

Do transcripts have to be perfect?
Perfect helps; “good, human-edited” is enough. Fix nouns, verbs, and timing; remove filler.

Can I reuse a thumbnail template?
Yes—consistency builds recognition. Rotate colors or focal shapes to avoid fatigue.

If I started tomorrow

• Promise first, video second.
• Chapters in the script—not an afterthought.
• Thumbnails tested at tiny sizes.
• One canonical page per story.
• Schema + sitemap + captions wired by default.
• Review CTR weekly and rewrite ruthlessly.

— gplpal