Video
transcription doesn’t need to be daunting. In fact, with VocalScript’s simple
process, you can use transcription to boost your website’s SEO and maintain
strong Google Search rankings. And that’s just the beginning! From link
building to lower bounce rates, we’ll walk through how video transcription can
help you build out SEO best practices. When
you start to optimize for search, you’ll begin to see benefits across the
board. After all, increased traffic should create more leads and more leads
will generate more sales, which drives revenue. Whether you’re a beginner or
seasoned expert in search marketing, transcribing videos is one strategy where
you should dig in your heels and implement.
Overview
Google’s
algorithm has hundreds (if not thousands) of ranking factors that determine
your rightful place in the search results. Because of this, it can seem
difficult to stay on top of things when trying to build an SEO strategy.
But here’s a hint: start where your audience lives. And regardless of what niche you’re in or what you’re selling, your audience is consuming content through video. That’s why transcripts for videos are important to search marketing.
The
4 Big SEO Benefits of Video Transcription Are:
1.
Higher search rankings
2.
Increased traffic
3.
Link building opportunities
4.
More time spent watching, and lower bounce rates
Video
Content is Here to Stay
With
that said, let’s discuss why transcripts are so important in the first place.
Like we talked about above, your customers are watching videos, whether you
want them to or not. The average person watches more than an hour and a half of
online video content per day, so if you’re not using video as part of your
strategy, you should start. In fact, 81% of businesses now use video as a
marketing tool because it’s necessary in this day and age.
Why
Use Video Transcription?
We
already know that video is important, but what’s the deal with transcripts?
Well, providing a transcript for a video is going to boost engagement and reach
a wider audience right off the bat. Because we consume content fast, we want to
get to the point faster, but sometimes videos take time to tell a story.
Transcripts help customers follow along or quickly pull out the main points that are useful to them. It also allows for easy sharing of content. But most importantly, video transcription and closed captions should be used to provide the same value to those who are hard of hearing or in a location where it’s hard to hear (coffee shop, train, bus). That’s why transcripts are an easy way to broaden the reach of your video content — you’re connecting with users who wouldn’t normally engage with just a standalone video.
Videos
Are Great, But Search Engines Like Google Cannot Crawl Videos
While
the Google AI is pretty intuitive, it doesn’t have superhuman abilities just
yet. It can’t determine what an image is or even crawl the content of a video.
So just like alt tags are important for images, transcripts are important for
videos.
4
SEO Benefits to Video Transcription
There
are ample benefits to SEO when it comes to transcription. SEO plays a huge role
in the success of your website, and, in turn, your business. We’ll discuss 4
today, but there are plenty more reasons to transcribe audio to text. Having
even a little bit of focus when it comes to transcribing video to text can help
you reach weekly, monthly and yearly goals.
1.
Transcription Helps Your Video Rank
Transcripts
help your content rank in a number of ways. In short, they create content for
Google to crawl. And when Google crawls content, it’s searching for key
indicators that content is useful to searchers. By providing a video
transcription, you’re including keywords in your content for Google to find and
rank.
Also,
because crawlers need transcripts to determine intent, this extra information
will provide more relevant information, and relevance is actually a large
ranking factor. As the Google AI is learning, it’s trying to provide searchers
with the most relevant results, so by having material that shows your content
is important, it’ll help boost your rankings in the search results.
2.
Transcription Increases Site Traffic
Rankings and traffic actually go hand-in-hand when it comes to SEO. If one goes up it will usually affect the other, and vice versa. So if transcriptions benefit rankings, they will also benefit your traffic. The higher up your target keywords are in Google, the closer to position one, which drives more traffic and clicks to your landing pages and content. The reasoning is pretty simple — no one usually clicks past the first page of Google. If you don’t find what you’re looking for on the first page, you’ll simply rephrase your search query. That’s why it’s so important to rank in, at least, the top ten results for your prime keywords. A higher ranking will generate more traffic, and increased traffic drives higher rankings. It’s all intertwined.
3.
Transcription Creates Link-Building Opportunities
A
link-building strategy can include both internal and external links, meaning
you’re linking to content within your own domain and trying to convince
external sites to link back to you. Video transcripts provide benefits for
both.
For internal linking, transcripts allow you to link to other relevant content on your site. For example, if your video is discussing product features, you might link to a specific product page on your site. As you build these links, you’ll start to create a web where your customer can easily navigate from one subject to the next simply by clicking through your content. In terms of external links, a few years ago Moz conducted a study to determine what types of content consumers linked to the most. They found that content with videos, images, and lists received 70% more links than pages with just images and lists! That tells us that people WANT to share content. It just needs to be compelling and easy to share. Transcription allows users to easily determine whether or not they want to share your video. And if your video was carefully curated and relevant to your industry, it’ll be an easy decision.
4.
Transcription Lowers Bounce Rates
Because
putting video transcripts on your website will increase engagement and widen
your audience, it’s pretty self-explanatory why your bounce rates would shrink
and the average time on page would increase. Transcription provides more
content for a customer to consume. If a person hits a page with just a video
and they’re unable to listen to the audio, they’re going to click away. A
transcript will give an assist if a user needs to consume content in a quiet
environment. And by allowing them to do so, they’ll stay longer on your site
and get more value out of what you produced!
As
an added bonus, transcripts can also provide you with a surplus of different
content opportunities. To start, your video already has a text version, and
transcripts are easy to turn into blog posts. With a few tweaks and
optimizations, you’ll have a piece of long-form content that will also be able
to rank in the search results, further benefiting your SEO.
You may also consider breaking your transcript into snackable social media posts or create an easy to follow checklist to show how much value your business can provide. Building assets around transcription will only make your content more shareable and allow you to reach different audiences.
Conclusion
The
countless benefits of video transcripts for SEO and your customers are
undeniable. This simple process of transcribing videos will not only boost the
health of your site, but it will also make for a much better user experience.
Fortunately,
VocalScript has all the transcription tools you’re going to need when it comes
to creating the most accurate transcript of your audio and video. Click here to
learn more about how VocalScript can help you!