First off, if the word ‘transcripts’ makes you nervous, the good news is, there are transcription companies that will do all your work for you if you don’t want to do it yourself. And now, before we go into the easiest ways to boost your YouTube viewership through transcripts, a word on why transcripts are so important for SEO: quite simply, transcripts are to videos what alt tags are to images. Powers that Be (including Google) that rule the Internet aim to make it a place where people who may be visually impaired or/ and hard of hearing will have equal opportunity to access information that everyone else is privy to. If you do not add transcripts to your video, you are being impolite, at best, and search engines will not take kindly to that. If you are worried about the time and effort it would take to transcribe a video, there are transcription companies just for that purpose.
Just as a high bounce rate is not desirable for a blog, so is a consistent stream of viewers clicking away from your video after only a few seconds not going to earn you any points with search engines. Even if yours is the most well optimized video in terms of keywords, unless you have viewer interaction in the form of complete or at least, lengthy viewing of the video and, preferably, comments and likes, you will not hold onto your rank for long.
A transcript helps, beginning with the fact that it is one more thing that the viewer would be interested in looking at. For music videos, this is quite elementary, since listeners often appreciate being able to view the lyrics in addition to listening to the song. When composing transcripts, if no naturally striking opening exists, create one, so that it is visible above the ‘show more’ button that will hide the rest of it. More on this in tip #2 below.
Here are the easiest ways to boost your YouTube viewership through transcripts.
1. Add captions and transcripts through the default process
Captions make your video get into search results – sometimes even without keyword optimization (although that usually helps). Google’s algorithms seem to take into account similar words and expressions and, perhaps, even video snippets (similar to image search results which display similar images often on the basis of color if nothing else can be used) to serve similar results.
When you add the transcript (or closed caption, better known as sub-title), Google will automatically sync the text with the spoken words in the video.
A word of advice here: do not rely on the auto-caption feature, not because it gives erroneous results, but because Google seems to be aware of the fact that it does and, consequently, does not index auto-captions. Take the time to create your own captions and Google will reward you for your efforts.
2. Add transcripts as video description
Add the transcript even if your video is made of image and text instead of words – but include it in the description field. Basically, you want as much as possible about your video to come up in search results, and the only acceptable form for search bots is text. Do not try to use this trick when you have already uploaded a transcript file for a video with speech – that would likely result in something like ‘transcript spamming’ because Google displays the entire transcription with time stamp below the video in any case. The workaround is to summarize the transcript or use a very brief article to explain what the video is all about. You should do proper keyword research for this, just as you would in case of normal web content that you intend to optimize. Remember the element of a good opening that we referred to earlier.
3. Get your transcriptions translated
If you wish to reach a wider audience, find the necessary resource to translate your transcript. This is similar to having sub-titles in a language that you understand, in a film made in a foreign language (e.g. English sub-titles in a Spanish movie assuming you understand English and not Spanish). The occasional video for site promotion does not really need so much effort, but if you are into dedicated video marketing with specific channels that are updated regularly, it is unwise to not include this option as part of your SEO strategy.
You might be wondering how getting translations done could count as one of the ‘easiest’ ways; it is indeed so, because once you hire somebody to get the work done, everything else falls into place without your having to do anything ever again. And you get an international audience as a reward.
Moreover, Google takes honest effort very seriously. This is why sites with videos tend to outrank sites without them. The assumption here is that it takes more effort to create a video and make it viewable than what it takes to simply type out content. Videos with transcripts in more than one language do reflect a certain amount of serious intent on the uploader’s part just as they are likely to attract a larger viewership because of the advantage that sub-titles naturally offer.
4. Rinse and repeat – on your own site
Rewrite the description part to avoid posting duplicate content but keep the transcription intact. Add them to your site along with the video. Choose an alternate caption so as to maximize your chances with different keywords and avoid competing with your own videos for the same keyword. You can follow this process and upload the video in sites other than YouTube, and while that will certainly reach an audience dedicated to each of such sites, you will not have any SEO advantage with your YouTube video or an increase in its viewership. That can only be achieved by adding a dofollow link to it from elsewhere, and the easiest way to do this is through a post on your own site or blog.
In case this sounds confusing, it isn’t, really. You are not trying to rank your site video. You are trying to find the easiest ways to boost your YouTube viewership through transcripts. It makes every sense to expend link juice in promoting your YouTube video in this manner. After all, your video strategy is using YouTube as the primary source of traffic. What you may get from the video on you own site is a bonus. It is easier to get more audience on YouTube which is THE video sharing site and Google’s very own, than through your own site which cannot possibly compete with it.
5. Find other uses for your transcripts
Finally, turn the transcript into an e-book and a PowerPoint presentation and upload them to ppt and pdf sharing sites like Docstoc and Slideshare. Write a unique but relevant description for each upload and you will have made the most of your transcripts. This will more or less complete your SEO strategy for videos, and all of these steps do actually count amongst the easiest if you are only willing to spend a little time on them.
Author Bio:
Jason Smith is an online manager for Athreon. He likes blogging about online strategies that are related to SEO, Content, PPC & Lead generation.
