CTR of Video Rich Snippet vs. Normal SERP

[stukerr]

Hi there,

We were ranking no. 1 for one of our key terms for a long time, however a competitor of ours by the looks of it purchased a load of private blog network links and managed to shift above us.

The page we rank for on that term has a video with the markup to trigger a video box rich snippet (which i've noticed never seems to be given on position 1 but can be for 2 and below) - so that is now what our entry in the SERPs is.

Since then we have actually dropped down to 3rd, with the web page now being in 2nd not having any new links / content in a very long time.

Therefore I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about whether the video box could actually reduce CTR which could have resulted in us dropping down to 3rd ? The meta description text seems to be reduced to 100 characters with the vid box, so we're not getting our full message across where the others in the results are.

My natural assumption would be that the video box would gain a higher CTR, but i'm thinking this may not be the case for us. Does anyone know of any data relating to the video box in the SERPS ?

Many thanks,

Stuart

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[EricaMcGillivray]

Yes, I highly recommend moving the transcripts to the actual page that the video's on. This will not only help with accessibility, but also improve your on-page SEO.

[stukerr]

Hi Erica, Thanks for your response, totally makes sense. We do have transcripts of the videos but we used these on separate FAQ pages which sit along side the videos (there are about 7 or so on that page with a JavaScript drop down to change between them) which receive some traffic but nothing like our main money page, would you recommend moving those transcripts to this page ? Many thanks, Stuart

[EricaMcGillivray]

I'd definitely keep the video.

Instead, I would 1) make sure your video is completely optimized (transcript, video sitemap, etc.); 2) build more links (and more legit than your competitors); and 3) freshness of page is a huge factor since Google's Freshness update.