Improve Your SEO with Video Captions: Here’s How
Great video involves more than visual excellence, one must focus on the small details in their content. A powerful video includes a compelling story, outstanding audio quality, and seamless editing, and delivers content that your audience likes. Are these elements sufficient to leave a lasting impression?
You’re probably missing out on an overlooked yet critical aspect of a successful video—Video Captions or Subtitles. Without this, you’re likely to receive lower ROI, organic traffic, and SEO performance. Why?
75% of your customers watch mobile videos on mute. This means your customers are reading captions while watching videos. Besides engaging customers, adding captions gives search engines more data to index, helping your videos rank higher and reach a broader audience.
So, how to improve your SEO with video captions? Read on to explore.
5 SEO benefits of video captions
Makes your content easy to engage with
Your customers are watching videos on the train, in a waiting room, or in between office lunch breaks. Captioning makes it possible to enjoy content without disturbing those around us. Customers can read along and still enjoy the video, increasing the engagement rate. They are more likely to like, share and comment on your videos. Such actions signal to search engines like Google and speak volumes about the value and relevance of your content. As Google loves to share relevant content, the probability of your video ranking higher on the SERPs increases manifolds.
Increases your search engine ranking
Even with artificial intelligence, Google crawlers and bots cannot analyze video content. The search engines consider factors like:
- Video metadata
- Engagement metrics
- Video quality
- Backlinks and embeds
- Mobile-friendliness
- Schema markup
- Social signals
A high-quality video with perfect metadata and backlinks might rank higher even if the content is not up to the mark. Enters video captions.
Search engines use captions to interpret what your video contains. The additional text layer in your videos encourages search engines to display your content in more search results, helping your target audience find your content easily. Captioning bridges the gap between your video and search algorithms, increasing your chances of being discovered.
Makes your video accessible and inclusive
Your target audience might have customers with hearing impairment or permanent hearing loss. Excluding them or not thinking about them when creating your videos leads to two significant issues:
- You ignore the American Disability Act (ADA)
- You miss out on potential revenue opportunities from such customers
Video captions ensure everyone understands your video, irrespective of their ability to hear. Your commitment to treating each customer with dignity demonstrates your dedication towards inclusivity and broadens your customer base. As a result, customers engage longer with your content, increasing satisfaction and reducing the bounce rate. Search engines recognize these as a strong ranking indicator.
Caters to an international audience
Your content becomes more accessible worldwide because captions eliminate linguistic barriers. Captioning English tech tutorials enables non-native speakers to comprehend the content even when the speaker has a strong accent or rapid speech. Creating videos that appeal to a wide audience will increase search engine visibility.
Provides higher keyword relevance
Captions are a great way to include highly relevant keywords naturally in your content. In the absence of these keywords, Google cannot understand what your content is about, reducing your ranking potential. Ranking improves when you use relevant keywords in your captions. Why? Search engines prefer displaying relevant content on the first page. For instance, you can add keywords like “10-minute ab workout” or “beginner-friendly exercises” in a workout video caption. Videos with keyword-rich captions make it easier for search engines to match your content to what people are searching for.
Best practices for optimizing your video subtitles for SEO
Use high-quality video captioning tools
Use reliable transcription tools to create your captions. It could be the difference between success and failure. Poorly automated captions leave you with error-filled captions that hurt your SEO instead of helping it. That’s why it’s worth choosing video captioning tools like QuickSubs. The tool is fast, accurate, and easy to use, saving you time while delivering captions you can always trust.
Optimize your captions for conversational language
Each caption should use a conversational language that imitates the natural search queries that customers perform when searching for information. Due to increasing voice search capabilities, a conversation style aligning with the customer’s behavior is a must. You can use natural language and common phrases to improve discoverability and make your captions more engaging.
Maintain accuracy
What happens when your captions and spoken content in your video are out of sync? Frustrated customers who either bounce or turn away to your competitors for better quality content. Such a negative user experience is sufficient to degrade your ranking, harm your brand’s reputation, and reduce engagement. Use a professional video captioning tool to deliver quality that keeps your customers returning.
Use long-tailed keywords
Long-tailed keywords are highly specific phrases with low search volume, but higher conversion rate. These long-tailed keywords help you reach customers who specifically search for your content. Replace generic keywords like “Marketing Strategies”, with more specific phrases like “B2B content marketing strategies.”
Keep captions concise and easy to read
Avoid overly long or complex sentences in your captions. Why? Customers are less likely to comprehend or understand what you’re trying to say. Clear, concise captions are easier to follow and less likely to distract from your video content.
Highlight key sounds or action
Making your content impactful requires captions that include non-verbal elements like [laughter], [silence], or [music playing] to your captions. These cues provide context, convey the video’s tone or emotion, and ensure everyone can fully experience the content.
Jumping on the video caption bandwagon
Captions are not an add-on, they’re what people expect. And, if you don’t listen to your customer requirements, you’ll likely be left behind. They have the power to transform your video content.
From increased organic traffic and higher watch time to improved SEO and accessibility, captions offer tons of benefits you don’t want to miss. Remember, the future of video content isn’t just visual, it’s accessible, inclusive, and optimized.
So, take the leap and let captions do the talking.
