Last month Youtube introduced automatic captions, so all that unsearchable audio…it is now searchable text! By adding captions to your video you are (theoretically) improving both the accessibility of your video to the hearing impaired, and the searchability of your video. ( I say theoretically, because marvelous as the captions are… they are extremely inaccurate.)
Not only have Youtube captions increased my client’s video views as much as 74%, they have dramatically increased traffic to their branded video site as well.
So, how do you use Youtube video captions to increase your site’s SEO? My solution is perhaps a little inelegant- but definitivley effective and requires nothing more than a video uploaded to Youtube (and embedded on your site) and Excel.
Step one: Edit and Upload
Time consuming, but necessary. Download the machine transcription from the captions tab of your video. This is a time coded machine transcription that opens as a fully editable text file. It will look something like this…
unedited youtube SVB captions files
How particular you want to be about the transcript’s accuracy is up to you, but make sure that all your key words are in the transcript and of course, don’t touch the time code. I’m a perfectionist, so it takes me about an hour to edit fifteen video minutes worth of a video. Then, simpy upload your edited transcript via the add a captions track button. Your edited transcript is now inextricably linked to your video via an xml file and the full text of your video is now searchable by Google (or Bing or Yahoo etc).
Step Two: Use your edited transcript to increase your site’s searchability
So now you have an accurate SBV transcript of your video but how do you use this text on your site? What do you do with all that ugly time code above each line? Here is where I move to Excel.
Copy the entire SBV file and paste it into the B column of an Excel spreadsheet. Number the A column from 1 until the last line of your transcript like so…
From here on all you have to do is Sort!
First sort the Excel document by the B column in descending order. This will isolate all the numbered rows- delete the numbered rows.
Then, sort one last time by the A column in ascending order. Your transcript will return to its chronological order.
Now all you have to do is copy your B column and paste it right into your blog- if you are using wordpress make sure you are using the HTML tab so that you don’t inadvertently create a formatting headache.
It’s not beautiful…more like lyrics than a formal transcript- but your only cost is time, and the search results make every minute worth it. My client’s videos are an hour long, so I create a separate blog post for the transcript. However if your video is short your transcript could work fine on the same page as the video.
Do you have a better method of utilizing youtube captions to increase your site’s SEO? I’d love to hear!!!
