Obviously, the main function of subtitles and closed captions is for deaf and hard of hearing people to follow what’s happening on screen.
There are, however, many other advantages to having captions on a video.
One of the most surprising of these is a boost in SEO, helping your video, website, and business to all become more visible to the wider world.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine optimisation, which is a fancy way of saying “be easier to find on Google.”
Now, there are literally hundreds of things that make Google decide whether your site should be ahead of another in their search results, including keywords, the quality of your content, and links to your site from other, reputable sites.
But SEO is a tough nut to crack because it is a constantly evolving, nebulous discipline, in which even the experts disagree on what does and does not work.
Although there is one topic in SEO on which everyone is certain; closed captions help.
Why SEO helps your business
It’s all about the numbers.
To grossly over-simplify it, the higher you are on Google, the more people click on your site, the more conversions you get.
You can buy traffic to your site through ads, but they’re largely ineffective, and of course, as soon as you stop paying for them, the visitors stop coming.
Getting your SEO right helps you gain “organic” visitors; people who come to your site naturally through a search engine.
You don’t have to pay them to click, they know you’re the best site to go to because you’re at the top of Google.
How Closed Captions help with SEO
If you have any videos on your website or uploaded to YouTube, you should always have captions included as an option.
The crawl bots and algorithms that scour the World Wide Web are looking for text to see what a website is about. That’s one of the reasons you need keywords – to show Google what it is you actually do.
When it comes to videos though, it’s a different story.
These bots can’t watch a video to know what it’s about, and therefore no matter how informative a video is, Google will ignore it when it comes to SEO.
In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll be punished in the search results because there’s always someone behind you who will take your place, pushing you down the list.
If a video has closed captions however, then there is text available for the bots to read.
If even a short, 5 minute video is content heavy, then the captions might contain the equivalent information of a small website.
Google loves this, especially if the video is relating to a specific question. If your video answers a query someone has typed into Google, then Google will bring it up as the first result.
Even if the answer to the specific question is half-way through your video, the search results will start playing it at the point necessary.
We can help your business
Google also owns YouTube, which is why they’re happy to prioritise videos in their search queries.
If a YouTube video answers a question, then why not send people there instead of someone else’s website?
If you’re not adding closed captions to your videos, then you’re missing a huge opportunity when it comes to your SEO.
In the competitive online world, it’s the small differences that decide which business makes the first page of Google and which is relegated to obscurity.
If you would like to know more about adding closed captions to your videos, then contact us today.
We provide both open and closed captions in over 30 document formats, and as a commitment to our high standard, our captioning work is checked for you.
