Closed captioning improves YouTube viewing figures

Did you know over 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute? Wow.

How can you maximise the chances that your target audience will a) even find your video and b) watch it?

The answer: closed captioning.

A study by YouTube showed that videos with closed captioning get 4% more views than those without captions.  Why is that? Because using closed captioning can improve how high up in search results Google places your video (that’s known as SEO).

Google can’t search the audio file of your videos. So, even if you have content on there that is relevant and useful to your target audience, Google won’t see it, and so won’t show it to your potential audience. That’s a real missed opportunity.

Using closed captioning can help Google find your video, recognise the keywords that describe the content, and then add it to the search results pages it produces when your potential customers ‘Google’ those keywords.

Closed captioning v auto-captioning from YouTube

YouTube does already provide an auto-captioning service that’s based on automatic speech recognition. But there are two good reasons not to use it:

1 – Because YouTube’s auto-captions are only 70% accurate, compared to close captioning’s 100% accuracy. After all the time and resources you have invested into creating a professional video, the last thing you want YouTube to do is create something incomprehensible and/or embarrassing like this:

2 – Because Google recognises that auto-captions are inaccurate and ignores them. Google and other search engines will only read files that have been uploaded to the video, like those provided through closed captioning.

Closed captioning for better rankings at home and abroad

Closed captioning isn’t just available in English. Our translation team can provide captions in over 80 different languages. That enables both international and non-native speakers to access your videos. And, just as with closed captioning in English, relevant search engines will read and index the captions. That can prove a big boost to your SEO, as there is less competition for keyword ranking in languages other than English.

Use transcripts to make your viewing figures even better 

At the same time as sourcing closed captioning of your video it makes sense to create an accurate transcript of the film. Add it into the ‘description’ field for your video and you’ll help Google to find it, read it and show it to your potential customers.

To find out more about our subtitling services, contact us.