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I am a food blogger, and I have a YouTube channel. My web pages have a fair amount of traffic (tens of thousands per month), and I am now making videos for those “recipes.”

I upload them to YouTube and then embed them to the corresponding webpage. I have also verified my website on YouTube.

Despite this, I haven’t seen a marked improvement in the search traffic to the page. I assumed the google would reward the increase in time spent on page and it will have a cascading effect.

Are there markups that I need to ensure the video is mine and consequently a part of the page? What are the others things I should be looking out here?

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    How are you expecting Google to measure time spent on page? For most websites they can't do that. Google says it doesn't gather data from Chrome about sites. Even if you use Google Analytics, Google says that it doesn't use data from it for ranking either. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Aug 9 '18 at 9:24
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Video in the direct download stream very much lowers the download speed, which is a critical factor for mobile users and it is Google's signal for search rank. Mobile users expect to download webpages between 2 and 3 seconds.

To optimize your videos, you can install the Youtube link in the button. In this case, the video will not be loaded in the live stream and this will increase the download speed of your web page. The video will load when the button is activated. For example:

<a class=button href=https://www.youtube.com/embed/zzzz target=_blank>

Also, you can optimize the preload of your video using the meta links as dns-prefetch, preconnect, prefetch, or prerender. Read more Resource Hints of W3.

To create structured data for your recipes, you can use Google's Guides for Recipes. Note that the video property here is recommended for use and there is an example of markup.

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  • Thanks Nikant. I’ve updated the question to with an example page. I was surprised to know that adding a YouTube iframe will have an impact on my load time. Also, I wonder how I can add a YouTube link as a video VideoObject. – Jane Jojo Aug 9 '18 at 15:04
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Google doesn't watch your videos so why would the time spent on page increase? Google recommends that you embed videos with a unique backstory. Posting just videos is considered low quality, therefore, Google is not going to reward you for it.

Posting a backstory with your video will help your rankings long term but don't expect massive shifts in ranking changes. Subscriptions, thumbs up and sharing YouTube videos improve your rankings on YouTube, it won't help your website rank.

Despite what Google says "content is king" it's not as simple as that, good content will only increase in rankings when users engage in the content. Nowadays it's better to post less often if users are not interacting with your website. Interactions with content mean that people are sharing your site on social media, forums, their own websites and other platforms. Someone visiting your website or you linking to the website on YouTube is not going to increase your rankings.

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  • Thanks @Simon Can you please point me in the direction of what a “backstory” is? Here’s my example: This is my post: alittlebitofspice.com/… and this is my corresponding video: youtube.com/watch?v=jDsO3J5klWg – Jane Jojo Aug 9 '18 at 16:13
  • Backstory is supporting text with the video on the page which you already have on your pages. You need to improve engagement on the website to improve rankings, natural backlinks, social sharing etc. – Simon Hayter Aug 9 '18 at 22:14
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For your video embedded page you can use schema markup for Video https://schema.org/VideoObject

For recipe, https://schema.org/Recipe Here's the example result of using recipe schema markup

UPDATE: Sample code for Videoobject markup

{ "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "VideoObject", "name":"name for your video", "caption": "caption for your video", "thumbnailUrl":"https://urlforyourthumbnailimage.com/image.png", "contentUrl":"https://www.linkforvideo.com", "description":"description for your video", "uploadDate": "2016-02-18" }

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  • Thank Liji. Do you know how I can add a YouTube video as a videoobject in a recipe? – Jane Jojo Aug 9 '18 at 16:14

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