Will subtitling Youtube video Be worthwhile?
-
We've been thinking that maybe it would be beneficial in terms of SEO to supply our YouTube videos with CC / subtitles.
Unfortunately, this is very time consuming, so we would like to know, basically, if it's worthwhile.
Does any of you have any expectations or even experience with this, you'd like to share with us?
-
We typically encourage our clients to caption any video they put on the web. I do not know the exact metrics to SEO rank jumping based on captions vs non-captions. That could be a experiment for Moz and their lab. In my experience though, it's a benefit beyond just the simple SEO. It's about general accessibility.
1st off, Google will try and auto caption your video whether you want them to or not. Typically it does an absolutely horrible job. So if someone is trying to watch your video with captions, it may make little to no sense.
2nd, Google will take those captions and translate them into any language it needs. Much like a bad game of telephone, we have found that bad translations just keep getting worse as google auto translates them.
3rd, it's been mentioned a few times that google does in fact scrape and index captions. They are what tells google what your video is about because Google doesn't have the AI intelligence to watch and understand. At least not until it goes full skynet and takes over. Here are a few links that may help.
http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo
http://www.reelseo.com/youtube-closed-captions-seo/
http://www.3playmedia.com/2014/01/10/future-accessibility-video-captions-according-google-youtube/On an implementation note, there are a few different ways to ease the burden.
- If it's script based it's easily upload-able yourself. While youtube is fairly awful at understanding, it can listen and align pretty well. If we have a script we simple copy and paste and are good to go.
- Hire out a professional transcription subtitle person. We do these on large scale projects. They transcribe and send us a nice and clean .srt file that we upload directly to youtube.
- Errand services. I have had friends that use services like Task Rabbit to hire out people to do the work. Never underestimate the power of 50 bucks when someone can type up a few things from home while sitting in their underwear.
- INTERNS! I'm sure nothing pleases an intern more than to sit in a dark room transcribing video all day long. I'm fairly positive it's what they live for... at least that's what are interns say when we are not forcing them to battle to the death with nerf swords.
-
I've never used this strategy personally but I have heard that Google will read the captions and use the text for ranking purposes. I've also seen articles mentioning this as a best practice for Youtube SEO. I don't have a specific source though, so hopefully someone with more experience will be able to help.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No employees so will a search engine optimisation company work me?
I'm self-employed and run two different companies solely by myself there is no employees but I contacted the two UK SEO companies which are recommended on Moz both of them based in London, but after sending them emails and speaking to them on the phone neither contacted me about they must think I'm too small. Do you find that small one-man band companies find it hard to get a SEO to work for them because my budget will be too small? The company I would like to improve the rankings on is a Whitby Holidat Cottages letting agency in Whitby www.EndeavourCottge.co.uk with 10 properties, so obviously I can't afford a large budget but I could happily afford a monthly subscription if they could do necessary works for me do you think this sounds feasible? Or am I better just continuing and trying to make the time to do the work myself even I'm not that expertise. What is your thoughts and experience? Thank you Alan Davidson
Social Media | | alandavidson1 -
Google+ and youTube
Hi everyone, Question regarding Google+ and youTube - 2 things I'm not massively au fait with these days. We have a number of branches all of whom have a Google+ account (with GoogleMyBusiness).
Social Media | | LoonyToons
All of these branches will soon be setup with a Communications Manager login only (for GoogleMyBusiness) as we need to restrict them from changing branch details. The powers that be in my company, have decided that we need to have 2 youtube channels for each branch.
One for news and the other for advertising properties. Having researched this, we understand that if we setup a new youTube channel, that will create another Google+ page - which we don't want, and could cause no end of trouble with duplicate Google+ pages. We are obviously going to try and persuade management to use only one youTube channel per branch, but in the event of being overridden does anyone have any advice on how to achieve 1 Google+ page with 2 youTube channels?1 -
How do I merge a google+ and a youtube account?
Before Google merged Google+ and Youtube, we had opened a Google+ account for our business from one email account and a separate account on youtube from a separate account. Now that Google merged the two channels, it created a new G+ page for our youtube account. but I want to merge the youtube account with our formal Google+ page. How do I go about doing that Thank you Joni
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz1 -
Google Pus Places, page and youtube issues. PLEASE HELP!!!
Ok I have a youtube channel, a page connected to that and I have a business listing but I cannot get all three to work together. Any ideas? https://plus.google.com/+CentralsaddleryCoUk is the page (I want to ad the location to this one) http://www.youtube.com/user/centralsaddleryvideo our youtube The two above seem to work fine but the local listing below will not connect to the page or youtube. https://plus.google.com/b/107598085314018001171/107598085314018001171/about?hl=en-GB This has been driving me nuts for ages.
Social Media | | mark_baird0 -
YouTube Listing Videos That We Didn't Upload
Our Company has recently started doing videos on installation and product features. As we were going through our Google YouTube Analytic, we noticed there are random letters and numbers that are coming up as a video (example:YsQgAQPykMI), although it is not a link. _Where we are finding this information: Google YouTube Analytic under the Comment section. The bottom section will list the videos that the channel has uploaded and its respective link. _ 1. What and why is YouTube pulling this information? 2. How can I remove this from our listing? 3. What are future measures we can take to prevent this from happening again? Unfortunately, I'm not able to upload an image to show you exactly what the issue is. Thanks for your help, Tamara HzS9DYi
Social Media | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Has anybody else noticed that Google has made a significant change to their SERP? There is a lot of social data reported from LinkedIn, Youtube and Facebook (includes page likes and activity) when you search by company name. Thoughts anybody?
Has anybody else noticed that Google has made a significant change to their SERP? There is a lot of social data reported from LinkedIn, Youtube and Facebook (includes page likes and activity) when you search by company name. Thoughts anybody?
Social Media | | rrad0 -
Should I no follow the embed code for youtube videos on my site?
Since it is not an internal page, would it make sense to nofollow links to my youtube videos throughout my site? Thanks for the help William
Social Media | | whorneff3100 -
Will becoming a YouTube partner get me higher rankings on the site?
One of the branded channels I run has been offered to be apart of YouTube's Partnership program. Trick is - I don't necessarily want to see ads pop up for my videos, as I imagine the revenue is fairly small. I would be wiling to join the program if there is evidence that joining the program helps our rankings on YouTube. I imagine it may - as YouTube likely would give preference for partnered channels, partly due to ad/revenue opportunities for them, and partly because partners have obviously proven to have better content. What do you guys recommend?
Social Media | | iinuser0