With the current economic climate along with pandemic redundancies worldwide, it’s not surprising that many entrepreneurs and bloggers are looking to turn a hobby into a business, start a dream venture they always wanted to be involved in or find ways of earning money online.
There are many ways for bloggers and other online entrepreneurs to reach out globally and attract interest and traffic from all over the world, as more and more people are using the internet daily according to recent research.
Many online business owners are looking to capture the hefty 4.66 billion users across the globe by reaching out to customers speaking every language on YouTube and other platforms.
Many might be wondering why it’s important to have captions and subtitles and what possible benefit it can bring to your freelance blog or video channel.
Let’s find out the definitive answer as to why you need to make sure you are offering captions and subtitles to your audiences in 2021 and beyond.
Why do I need subtitles and captions for YouTube videos? There are many reasons why bloggers or online entrepreneurs should be using subtitles and captions in their YouTube videos. they will encourage traffic from across the world and an audience from many languages, help those with hearing impairments to enjoy your videos, and crucially build important SEO to increase organic visitors
Now we’ve nailed the brief, so you can have a better understanding of the importance of subtitles and closed captions for your YouTube video, let’s start by looking at exactly why YouTube is an important platform for any online venture right from bloggers, through to larger businesses.
Why should bloggers use YouTube?
With YouTubes colossal 1.7 billion users in 2021, growing from 1.6 billion in 2020, it’s the ‘go-to’ place to discover videos that not only entertain you but also educate and inspire.
Online storytelling has become as much a necessity for brands, bloggers, and other entrepreneurs who love the flexibility and reach of the YouTube video platform, and as an extra bonus to using the heavyweight self-promotion and marketing power of Facebook.
As a form of advertising, having subtitles or captions embedded in your video, is second to none as one of the chief benefits of having a YouTube channel is that you can use it to divert targeted traffic to your website.
Any visitors to your YouTube vlog can be diverted to your website via embedded links in your videos and also in the video descriptions.
So let’s drill down into details. Enid and find out why online entrepreneurs promoting their brand, video bloggers, or other influencer video creators should be using subtitles or closed captions. Let’s find out more below.
What is a subtitle or Closed Caption?
Although closed captions (often known as CCs) and subtitles look fairly similar, it’s worth understanding as a YouTube vlogger or blogger that they are in fact designed for two different purposes.
- Subtitles: This type of video embedded title offers a text alternative for the dialogue of video footage. These can include the spoken words of characters, narrators, and other presenters.
- Closed captions: This form of text is a supplement for dialogue and describes relevant parts of the soundtrack. This could be background noise, such as the noise of a car approaching, phones ringing, or any other audio clue for your audience, which would benefit from a text description.
The difference in a nutshell between these two forms of additional video text is that subtitles assume your audience can hear the audio but dialogue needs to be provided such as in a different language or for the hard of hearing for example.
Closed captioning, on the other hand, assumes an audience cannot hear the audio and needs a text description of what they would otherwise be hearing.
Why should I use subtitles and closed captioning?
With YouTube’s global reach, it’s easy to forget that people all over the world might be watching your videos.
Any blogger with a YouTube channel can encourage more views from foreign audiences by adding subtitles and closed captions to your videos.
YouTube captions create more views
When you add subtitles to YouTube videos, your audience benefits, and more importantly, your video ranks higher.
“Another really important benefit of using YouTube captions is that is read and indexed by both YouTube and Google.”
Captions are considered a full, accurate representation of your video through text, which allows search engines to get a much deeper understanding of your video content.
For short-form content which is footage that is less than 5 minutes long, pasting the entire transcript into the video description field is an added bonus and recommended as it’s also weighted in the search algorithms.
It’s important to note that YouTube’s automatic captions are not indexed by Google or YouTube due to the high error rate.
“High-quality professional captions are the only way to take advantage of the SEO benefits”
For longer content, cherry-pick the transcript for particularly insightful nuggets of information and make these the key value proposition of your video.
Make sure you also extract keywords and keyphrases from the video transcript and add them as tags or include them in the video description field under a heading of “Topics”.
It’s important to note that YouTube’s automatic captions are not indexed by Google or YouTube due to the high error rate.
So it’s always recommended that you use a quality, reliable, and professional subtitle and caption creating business to ensure you are making the most out of the benefits of YouTube video SEO.
For the deaf or hard of hearing
Having subtitles in your videos actually helps you more than you may think. Subtitles are traditionally used for viewers that are deaf, hard of hearing or speak a different language.
Video embedded text It can be translated by Google and expands your reach even further than your native language audience.
Captions enable deaf and hard of hearing users watch videos. This is important for all video publishers, but especially educational institutions, government agencies, businesses, and broadcasters who need to comply with accessibility laws and internal policies.
Low earbud access
Sometimes, your audience might want the benefit of subtitles if they are in a public arena, around other people such as at work, or even if they’ve forgotten their earbuds.
Subtitles can also help with clarity, especially if the video is either training or Informational, which helps the view more easily understand.
Capturing a worldwide audience
Once verified, subtitles and closed captions will be indexed by YouTube to act as metadata. This means your video will be easier to find via searches. This has the potential to increase your viewership and benefit your overall rank.
YouTube captions increase audience viewing times
In SEO, there is a lot of talk about bots: bots searching, bots crawling, and bots indexing. Search engine bots look for signals of relevancy left by humans. This is why engagement is crucial to the success of your video and any subsequent SEO.
Engagement is shown on YouTube through human actions such as commenting, subscribing, and viewing.
Captions have been shown to increase video engagement and view times, according to a study by PC Magazine.
YouTube Captions Help with Accessibility
As 41% of videos are incomprehensible without sound or captions.
Captions are also a huge help to people who know English as a second language. These captions and subtitles make it possible to watch videos in sound-sensitive environments, like a workplace, for instance.
Increases SEO benefits
Captions increase YouTube SEO crucially because the text is indexed by both Google and YouTube. This is an obvious benefit. User experience and universal design are also improved by captions.
Captions keep visitors on your channel longer. As video increasingly becomes monetized, both you and YouTube want to encourage viewers to stick around and click around!
Finally, captions make your videos accessible to a much broader audience, which is closely aligned with Google’s mission to make all web information universally accessible.
And finally…
So there you have it! Every reason to make sure you hire a reputable caption and subtitles specialistat Transaption Subtitling Team
We have had …. years’ experience in providing subtitles and captions in all languages and offer a professional service that will increase SEO and help your video to rank, both with Google and within YouTube algorithms.
Adding captions to the video production process will help your YouTube videos to stand out from the crowd and make sure you are getting the most from your YouTube Channel!
Get in touch with one of our expert Transaption team today to start your USCIS Certified Translation Services or any Document Translation Services. Visit our website www.transaption.com or Email us info@transaption.com or Call us 1-888-999-8628. Pricing comparison with top competitors: https://transaption.com/pricing/