7 video SEO tips to drive more views on your Shopify store

It can be frustrating to invest time and money into creating product videos for your Shopify store only for them to receive very few views. To maximize the reach and impact of your video content, it’s important to optimize your videos for search engines. Video SEO can help your videos rank well in search results, drawing more potential customers to your Shopify store.

Read on for seven tips to help you SEO your Shopify product videos.

What is video SEO?

Video SEO is the process of optimizing videos to appear in search engine results and improving these videos’ organic rankings.

Why is video SEO important?

Search engines like Google often show videos in search results for relevant queries. Not optimizing your videos to appear in searches could significantly reduce the number of views they receive.

Video search results on Google

Essentially, video search optimization ensures that videos are accessible to search engines and can communicate the content of the videos in a format crawlers can understand.

Top SEO tips for Shopify store videos

Make sure search engines can access a web page with your video

Make sure your videos are embedded on web pages that search engines can access and index. Don’t block these pages from crawlers. Internally link to pages with videos to help search engines discover and crawl the video content.

Allow search engines to access the video file

In addition to making your Shopify store’s web pages crawlable, allow search engines to access the actual video files. This helps them better understand the content and generate video previews. Use static URLs for the videos rather than expiring links.

Use a keyword-rich title and description

Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your product video titles and descriptions. This metadata helps search engines determine what your videos are about. Write compelling titles/descriptions to entice clicks while including keywords.

Video search results with a keyword rich title

Submit video sitemaps to search engines

Create and submit a video sitemap to give search engines more details about your videos, like the title, description, thumbnail, etc. Refer to search engine guidelines on how to format video sitemaps properly.

Use video structured data

Implement structured data on your Shopify store web pages with videos to provide key video information to search engines. For Shopify, you can use apps or edit theme code to insert VideoObject schema markup.

Include a video transcript

If your video has important spoken content, include a transcript. This makes videos more accessible while giving search engines additional context about the video. Transcripts can help the page rank for more relevant terms.

Create an enticing video thumbnail

Search engines use click-through rates to assess relevance. Compelling video thumbnails can entice more clicks and views. Look at top-ranking videos for inspiration and identify thumbnail best practices you can apply to your own videos.

Examples of videos with great thumbnails

Wrapping up

By implementing these video SEO tactics, you can help your Shopify store videos attain better visibility in search results, driving more potential customers to your store.

If you have any other questions about Shopify SEO, consider reaching out to me, a Shopify SEO expert, for personalized advice.

About the author

Daniel Lee

I am an SEO expert with 14+ years of experience. I create custom SEO and content marketing strategies for ecommerce businesses of all sizes, from startups to industry giants. My background includes a Master's degree in International Marketing (University of Law) and business coaching training from Cambridge Univerity's Møller Institute. This unique blend allows me to deliver strategies that drive significant growth and a competitive edge for my clients.

Boost your ecommerce success with the EcommElite newsletter!

Enjoyed this article? Get more like it—plus exclusive SEO and content marketing strategies—direct to your inbox every Friday. Click the button to subscribe to EcommElite now!

Sign up for our weekly trending topics newsletter

Sign up and we will send you trending topics for your content marketing every Monday. Categories will include: Fashion & Apparel, Health & Fitness, Beauty & Cosmetics, Home & Furniture, and Consumer Technology.