Learn How Easy SEO for Video is with Captions & Transcripts

Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%. During those searches, 75% never go beyond the first page of results, 60% of clicks are on the top 3 search results, and 70% of the traffic is for videos. If you want your content to show, it is time to become an expert on SEO for video

These statistics make it clear that internet search is crucial to success in business. When using video in your marketing strategy, it is just as important to optimize SEO for video as it is for your company/product web pages.

They best way to ensure your video is not lost in the abyss of internet content — an abyss in which more video content is uploaded in 30 days than all three major U.S. T.V. networks combined have created in 30 years — is to use captions and transcripts.

Below are 4 ways that captions and transcriptions make video an SEO goldmine, followed by tips and tricks for putting it all together.

1. Getting Your Video Indexed and Ranked

Captions and transcripts provide video data that can communicate to search engines, allowing them to index your video, crawl through the content for relevancy, and rank it highly.

Specifically, a time stamped transcript of your video provides a database of information that tells the search engine what relevance your video has, and where exactly it is in the video.

With this improved database beyond basic human-entered data, search engines can get better access to what is in your content, which translates to higher rankings.

2. Grabbing Attention

Captions are well liked across the board. 80% of people who watch video using captions aren’t even hearing impaired; people just enjoy using them to better focus on and comprehend the information in videos. And the perks to captioning content don’t just include making people happy, they actually catch viewers’ attention and deliver your message without any effort for the viewer.

Research has shown that captions capture audiences’ attention long enough to make an impact. Facebook and Nielsen found that up to 47% of the value in a video campaign was delivered in the first three seconds, while up to 74% of the value was delivered in the first ten.

Once you have a viewer’s attention, the knock out punch is the ability of captions to tell your video’s while in the silent auto-play environment of news feeds. Recent Facebook findings estimate that as many as 40% of video ads don’t communicate their message effectively unless the sound can be heard. Captions solve this problem by letting users view the video in silent mode while knowing all of the spoken words

With 65% of Facebook videos being viewed on mobile devices and as much as 85% of video views happening with the sound off, it is imperative to put out eye-catching content that can be viewed without sound.

3. Increasing Watch time

Watch time, or the length of time someone spends watching a video, is not only important for communicating your ideas or call to action, it is also a consideration for search engines when ranking your video. Search engines view watch time as an indicator of quality video content. The longer time people spend watching your videos, the higher quality they must be.

Both Google and YouTube use watch time as a primary factor for ranking. This method of measurement is so significant to Google that it patented “Watch Time Based Ranking.” The more and longer a user is watching a video, the higher the Google ranking will be.

The best way to improve watch time is through captions and transcriptions. Research has found that 80% of consumers will watch videos with captions to completion, as opposed to only 40% for videos without captions.

Furthermore, Facebook’s internal tests showed that captions on video ads increased view time by an average of 12%. With 56% of web search traffic being for videos, having a strong watch time is crucial to having a high search ranking.

4. Driving Engagement

Increased watch time resulting from captioned video content goes hand in hand with an increase in viewer engagement. This means more shares, likes, and comments on your video, which are some of a search engine’s favorite things. Companies that have added captions to their existing video content have seen an immediate increase in engagement of 14% in just two weeks.

Captions will further boost engagement for the 60% of viewers who are either hearing impaired or speak languages other than English. Adding these simple textual components opens up your videos to a previously excluded audience, improving your viewer base and engagement.

If you are a globally reaching company, appealing to international audiences is important as well. In the world of video, 80% of YouTube views come from outside the US and 67.5% of YouTube views come from non-English speaking countries. Captions, transcripts, and subtitles are fantastic mechanisms for increasing video views and engagement across the world.

Follow SEO for Video Best Practices

Ensure you are an expert at SEO for video by employing these practices:

Keyword strategy

• Page titles need to include your keyword/s.
• H1 and H2 tags should include keywords.
• Your meta description should use main keywords.
• Alt text should include the main keyword, in both the alt text of your video thumb and other graphics.
• Place on-page video transcript within the body of the page.
• Make certain on-page content includes the main keyword and similar keywords throughout the body content.
• URL must include your keyword in the URL. For example: on_page_seo_tips.
• Video Sitemap needs to match on-page SEO elements.

Transcription strategy

Think of video captions and transcripts as the text copy of a web page. You want to make sure Google is reading the most accurate version of your video transcript, just like you would on your website pages.

There are two options for placing transcripts with your video. You can paste the transcript directly in the description section of the video, or into the HTML of each of the pages where your videos are hosted.

Transcriptions give your viewers the option to “read” a video if they can’t listen at the time, while providing the keyword richness a search engine needs.

On top of the keyword and engagements benefits, video transcriptions provide you with written content that can be re-purposed for how-to articles, guides, blog posts, eBooks, Infographics or even white papers.

It’s Time to Get Started

If you have quality content, its time to get your brand out there and make SEO for video the trick in your back pocket. The SEO leads your videos will generate have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as paid listings) have a 1.7% close rate.

It is as easy as using a captioning and transcription service. Here at cielo24, we specialize in searchable captions, time-coded transcripts, and media intelligence for video.

For questions about how we can help you, email us here. To request a free quote, go here.