Google significantly revamped its documentation about ranking pages that contain video content. While the changelog lists three areas that changed, a review of the content provides a case study of four considerations for digital marketers and publishers when refreshing content to improve relevance for site visitors—and Google.
What Changed
The documentation that was updated relates to ranking web pages that contain videos. The purpose of the documentation is to communicate best practices for optimizing videos for higher visibility in Google’s search results.
Google’s changelog indicated that there were three major changes to the Video SEO best practices page.
Clarified video indexing criteria
Updated technical requirements
Added a new section about dedicated watch pages for each video
This is what the changelog shows what was changed:
“Improving the Video SEO documentation
What: Overhauled the video SEO best practices. Notably, we clarified the video indexing criteria and technical requirements, added a new watch page section, and expanded our examples.
Why: Based on feedback submissions, we revisited our video SEO guidance to clarify what’s eligible for a video result and how site owners can make it easier for Google to find their videos.”
Four Reasons To Refresh Content
There’s a common misinterpretation that encourages changing content annually because “Google loves fresh content,” which is a gross misunderstanding of the Freshness Algorithm. Content shouldn’t be changed without purpose—otherwise, it’s just “rearranging the furniture” instead of truly “redesigning the space.”
Google’s reasons for updating the content offer a mini case study of three things publishers and businesses should consider when freshening up their content.
These are the three reasons for changing the Video SEO content:
Remove Outdated Content
Improved Information Density
Add Fresh Information
Update For Brevity And Clarity
1. Remove Outdated Content
The old version of the documentation was written when video as web content was a “growing format” and the changes reflect that the times have changed, rendering the old content out of date.
“Video is a growing format for content creation and consumption on the web, and Google indexes videos from millions of different sites to serve to users. “
Videos in content are not a growing format. The editors of the web page were right to remove that passage because it no longer made any sense.
Takeaway: Always keep up to date with how your readers perceive the topic. Failure to do this will make the content look less authoritative and trustworthy.