Businesses are taking advantage of video SEO now more than ever. If you have yet to use video transcription and closed captions to improve SEO, you're missing out on a major opportunity. Here are some ways video transcripts and closed captions improve search engine performance.
Rank Higher in the SERPs
Closed captions make your videos more searchable. When you create closed captions, a text file is created that your video references as it plays. This text file is readable and indexed by bots.
Increase Web Traffic
Just like captions, bots index the text found in video transcripts. When you create a transcription, Google bots can crawl the text to better understand its content.
Improve Engagement
Watch time is a major factor for ranking videos on YouTube. Closed captions help improve engagement as viewers can watch your video regardless of audio availability.
Craft an Effective SEO Strategy
Video transcripts can be useful when building each video's individual page. Prominent keywords in transcripts allow people and bots to quickly scan the text to get a sense of the topic.
Boost Off-Page SEO
Longer videos result in longer transcripts. Use this to your advantage by breaking up the transcript over several pages, creating opportunities to add more keywords.
Repurpose Text Transcripts
Once you have a video transcript, use it to create additional content. Summarize the topic, lift quotes to create graphics, or create PDF guides.
Enhance User Experience
Video transcripts enhance user experience by providing information in text form that is accessible to all, including people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Introducing transcripts and closed captions to your videos can help widen your audience by allowing more people to find your videos online.