Adding captions is a good way to optimise YouTube videos. The written word is crawlable so you are more likely to appear in search results.
I’ve been creating videos for years but until recently I’ve just been using YouTube as a hosting platform. I’d upload my videos so that I could embed them in blog posts.
Recently I realised I’d been missing a trick. I’ve a truck load of videos on my YouTube channel and if I optimised them for search I could get far more traction.
Part of my video strategy is to let people find me, to see me, to trust me. By just promoting those videos through my website I was missing a trick.
So I’ve been researching and learning. I’m slowly beginning to optimise my channel and videos. Today, I’m starting a series of 1 minute moments on the topic of YouTube and search.
Tips to help you get your videos to appear in search results both within YouTube and traditional search engines. This is part one.
Part 2 is on optimising your videos to appear in ‘Realted videos’
Part 3 covers optimising playlists
For more YouTube channel tips read about the mistakes I made with mine and how to avoid them
Optmise your YouTube video with captions
How to use Captions
Captions work well for search
It makes sense when you think about it. Search engines can’t watch your video or hear what you are saying but they can read text. By adding captions you’re creating a text file that tells those search engines exactly what you are saying, it will help them index your video.
The downside is that you have to create them. YouTube can ‘auto-caption’ your videos. Just click the ‘CC’ button underneath your video and chose the language you want to caption in.
But there’s a problem
Auto-captioning is cool but there’s a problem. It can’t understand me at all! I was happily auto-captioning my video only to discover that it hadn’t a clue, the results were hilarious.
The solution, and this takes a bit of time is to take those auto captions as a guide and edit them. YouTube makes this simple with an interface that pauses the video as you type. It’s pretty cool.
So now you need to think keywords not just when you are writing your content but also when you are speaking it.
Tune in next week for part two.
Get a headstart on Google Analytics 4 & understand the lingo with the GA4 phrase book
Great post! The CC facility is fantastic and takes a lot of the hard work out of transcribing.
But ALWAYS, ALWAYS review and edit the auto CCs provided.
I offer this as a service, as it does take time to do.
Thanks for highlighting the need for this Amanda
I’m lucky that my typing speed isn’t too awful and I’m happy working on my short video. For the longer ones… I’m not going to bother but it would be worth getting transcriptions done for me. Glad to know you offer this service
Some of the auto CC’s that have come out on my videos are hilarious. Thanks for the tips 🙂
I think an outakes video of these could be hilarious!