5 Ways to use Closed Captions to boost your SEO Rankings

Introduction: Video SEO is a relatively new concept in the world of SEO. It is similar to traditional SEO, but there are some key differences. One of the most important differences is that videos inherently require different tactics because there is very little text to work with.
The first step in video SEO is to transcribe your video and then add closed captions. This will allow you to rank for keywords that are not spoken in the video but are still relevant to it.
Here are 5 ways in which using Closed Captions can help increase your SEO rankings.

Using video transcripts to increase traffic

Transcripts are a textual representation of the spoken content in video and audio files. Search engines can’t watch a video or listen to an audio file, so they rely on transcripts to understand what is being said.
Transcripts are not just for search engine optimization (SEO), they also provide accessibility for people with disabilities and make it easier for people who speak different languages to understand the content.
This American Life is a popular podcast that has been around for over 20 years. They have seen a 6.68% increase in search traffic by adding transcripts to their website. This is because people are more likely to search for something if they can find it on the internet.
Transcription services are becoming more and more popular as well because they provide an easy way to get content online without having to do the work of transcribing it yourself.

Transcription and content creation

Transcripts are a good foundation for content because they can be easily refined and adapted to create new content. For example, you can take a transcript of an interview or speech and turn it into an article or blog post.

Closed Captions and increased watch-time

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. It has over 1 billion users and more than 400 hours of video uploaded every minute.
The watch time metric is a critical metric for determining search rank on YouTube, with longer watch time correlating directly with high rankings. This means that if you want to rank higher on YouTube, you need to make sure that your videos are engaging and have a long watch time.
Closed captioning is a service that provides a transcription of the audio track of a video mostly for people with auditory disabilities, as well as those who cannot hear the audio due to noisy environments.
The closed captioning service can be provided in two ways: either through an automated transcription service or by having someone manually transcribe the video. The automated transcription service is more popular because it is cheaper and faster than manual transcription.

Transcriptions and link building

A video transcript is useful for link development in addition to providing space for keywords. You can link words in a text to other pertinent items. This could be a page on your website or one from another source.
The transcript can also be made available on a different landing page to which you can link. In addition to increasing the number of links and providing search engines with more information about the structure of your website, this makes it simpler for users to switch between related topics.

Increased number of transcript pages

Usually, a lengthier video results in a longer text. By dividing the transcript over numerous pages, you may make the most of that extensive body of information.
Your long-form transcripts can be targeted with additional keywords if they are housed on separate pages.
Based on the subjects covered at that point in the movie, each transcript page should have its SEO keyword approach.