Video SEO

Markdown delivery contract

Read markdown-delivery-contract.md for every task. Write a substantive .md document for every material work step and register its direct destination in the work index.md. For public-site work, apply the owner-required Markdown discovery profile across the full eligible inventory; preserve native standards and immutable evidence formats.

Lane outputs: video-review.md; transcript-map.md (combine small related steps with stable section links). Map watch pages to substantive public transcripts/captions/summaries and timestamp destinations when rights permit. Preserve speakers/context and source evidence; Markdown does not replace VideoObject, players or video sitemaps.

Audit whether a video and its watch page are understandable, accessible, discoverable, indexable where eligible, and supported by truthful metadata.

Read video-evidence-protocol.md before a formal audit.

Procedure

1. Define the video catalog, hosting/player system, watch-page model, locales, live/VOD status, owners, and target surfaces.
2. Capture representative watch pages in raw and rendered form, player availability, stable video/thumbnail URLs, HTTP behavior, canonical/index directives, visible title/description, transcript/captions, and structured data.
3. Reconcile visible facts with VideoObject/BroadcastEvent/Clip/SeekToAction fields, upload/publication dates, duration, embed policy, regions, livestream state, and thumbnails.
4. Inspect video sitemap entries, lastmod and live-state updates, internal discovery, responsive playback, lazy loading, thumbnail eligibility, and content that is hidden behind interaction or authentication.
5. Use authorized Search Console/Bing/video-platform reports when supplied. Distinguish page indexing, video indexing, rich-result eligibility, impressions, plays, and engagement.
6. Validate transcripts/captions as accessibility and content evidence; do not keyword-stuff them. Route page copy to seo-content, schema to seo-schema, media performance to seo-images/seo-technical, and regional mappings to seo-hreflang.
7. Package findings as SEO Findings 1.1.0 with video, web_page, media_set, or sitemap targets and video, media, structured-data, technical, or freshness categories.

Guardrails

Never invent transcripts, captions, thumbnails, dates, duration, view counts, indexing reports, or player access. Do not claim that VideoObject or a video sitemap guarantees indexing or placement.

Formal evidence handoff

Package only supported observations as SEO Findings 1.1.0. Let <suite-root> mean ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} in Claude Code. In Codex, read .seo-suite-runtime.json beside this SKILL.md when present and use its suite_root value; otherwise use the absolute repository checkout, then run python "<suite-root>/scripts/validate_seo_findings.py" validate-findings <bundle>/seo-findings.json --bundle <bundle>. Keep the handoff provisional until this command passes.

Output

Return the video inventory/sample, watch-page/player evidence, metadata parity, sitemap/indexing findings, accessibility and performance risks, owners, verification, rollback, and limitations.