Leverage Marketing

Optimizing Videos for SEO

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It is our job to try and squeeze just about any and all SEO value from any page. As more and more people become aware what to do (i.e. keyword density)  and what not to do (all flash), many struggle to find the correct balance between aesthetically pleasing and keyword rich content.

In order to reach this optimum balance we include Keyword rich text into: photos, title, descriptions, how-to’s, and whatever else you can think off. Now, we can harness the power of text and add it to Video using closed caption. This way we get the value of keyword rich content with the aesthetics of a video.

So how does it work?

Well, this article has a few easy (and not so easy) steps for accomplishing this task.

Honestly, there can be a bit of trickery involved. However, if you have your videos housed on YouTube why not just use their nifty tool and embed the video into your code.

So, here is what YouTube says about adding Closed Captions or subtitles to your videos:

You can add captions to one of your videos by uploading a closed caption file using the “Captions and Subtitles” menu on the editing page

Know your files:

A caption file contains both the text and information about when each line of text should be displayed.

A transcript file, on the other hand, just contains the text of what was said in the video. If the video’s in English, YouTube can use speech processing algorithms to determine when the words in a transcript should be displayed.

Once you have the files, log into your YouTube account to upload them and:

  1. Mouse over your username located in the upper right corner of every page.
  2. Click My Videos. You will then be directed to a page showing your uploaded videos.
  3. Find the video to which you’d like to add captions/subtitles and click the down arrow located to the right of the Edit and Insightbuttons. Select the Captions and Subtitles button from the drop down menu.
  4. Click the Add New Captions or Transcript button on the right hand side of the page. You will be prompted to Browse for a file to upload.
  5. Select a caption/subtitle or transcript file to upload. If you are uploading a transcript (no timecodes), select Transcript file, otherwise, select Caption file.
  6. Select the appropriate language. If you wish, you can also enter a track name.
  7. Click the Upload File button.

So there you go! Now your videos are optimized for SEO.