Using video transcripts to improve SEO
Including video transcripts with your YouTube video might seem like an unnecessary step but it’s more beneficial than most realize. Here are two reasons why you should upload a written transcript with your video:
- It will help your audience better understand the content of your video, which is the most important part of providing content to any given audience.
- It will help your SEO (search engine optimization) rankings because the content will be indexed and incorporated into search engines. In other words, your video will be ‘readable’ by search engines.
You can also use video transcripts to improve SEO by posting them on a separate page (which will help build links). Additionally, if you incorporate your keywords into the script it will help you with your SEO in general. You can also include a partial transcript on the actual page and link to the full transcript elsewhere on your website. Giving yourself more written text around your video provides more indexing potential. The more you write, the more there is for search engines to rank.
YouTube lets you accomplish this in a few easy steps. YouTube automatically transcribes some videos (in Video Manager, you’ll see “cc” next to the video title) but if your video wasn’t automatically transcribed, here’s how to manually do it:
After writing your transcript in a .txt file and saving it, click ‘edit’ on the video you want to transcribe. Then click on Captions > Add captions > Upload a file. After uploading your transcription file, click Sync. This action will sync the words with the video. More often than not it can be a little off, so you have to play back the video and edit the transcription as needed.
