5-Step Guide to Formatting Video Transcriptions for SEO

Video transcriptions are critical for successful video SEO. During this year, 74% of all search traffic will be for video, and this percentage will only rise for next year.

While you may think you are ready to go after getting an accurate video transcription, there are a few SEO techniques and strategies that you must implement.

We have broken these down into five easy steps so you can start knocking your video SEO out of the park.

Step 1: Name Your Video with the Appropriate Keywords

By default, many video programs will export your videos with names like “sequence 1” or other generic titles that have no SEO value. To optimize your video title, use the keywords that you have chosen for the video.

Step 2: Place the Video Transcription

Once you have an accurate video transcript, paste it into the description section on YouTube and within the body of your video’s landing page. This is something that both Google and YouTube will crawl and use to form your SEO ranking.

Step 3: Format the Video Transcript

You will want to create titles, headlines, and subheadings in the transcript for optimal SEO success. You should include your keywords in:

• Page titles
• H1 and H2 tags
• Meta description
• Alt text
• On-page content
• URL

Along with this, you will want to ensure that:

• Your video Sitemap matches on-page SEO elements
• You do not include the <no script> tags, as this may slow the loading time of the page
• You use in-script links, relevant links to other pages on your site, and external links

Step 4: Create a Landing Page or Blog Post

Each video should have its own landing page. This page will help your viewers go directly to the content and video they want to watch and lets search engines like Google know where to properly categorize the webpage for better rankings.

With the optimized transcript on the page, Google will see the contents of the video and the page and index it into search results. This 1-2 punch will improve your total SEO ranking.

Step 5: Embed Video onto Landing Page

Embed your video onto the corresponding landing page or blog post. This will allow Google to see that there is an association between your video, your website, and your YouTube channel.

Bonus: Repurposing Videos

Video transcriptions offer great opportunities for repurposing your video into other types of content. Using the transcript you can easily create blog posts, infographics, product descriptions, eBooks, and more.

To learn more about how you can use video transcriptions, check out our post: 4 Clever Ways to Use Video Transcripts in Business and Education.