My name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer.
For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...
I’ve been waiting for this for some time now! My biggest complaint about video is that the content within video is not spiderable (if that is even a word?). Still, I continued to make videos and I focused what little SEO power that I had on the videos (titles, descriptions, tags). Let me introduce you to YouTube Closed Captioning and true SEO Video bliss!
I’ve been waiting for this for some time now!
My biggest complaint about video is that the content within video is not spiderable (if that is even a word?). Still, I continued to make videos and I focused what little SEO power that I had on the videos on such things as the:
- Video Title
- Video Description
- Video Tags
- Backlinks (usually from my own sites or social bookmarks)
YouTube is now so much more SEO friendly! Welcome Closed Captioning to YouTube. Personally, I do not know how long this functionality has been available, but I found it now (and I want to share it with you immediately!).
So we can now add subtitles or closed captioning to our YouTube videos using a formatted video transcription. The trick is to get the video transcription file format right (which is called Subviewer and has a .sub extension). The file needs to be text and should end with the .sub extension. The internal formatting of this Subviewer file needs the following structure (or a version of…):
0:00:00.000,0:00:13.000
Hey, there, everyone, this is Matt Bredel….
0:00:13.000,0:00:22.000
Now, with the SEO Exciter series I’m going …
…
Essentially, it is the time stamp (to and from on the first line), the transcription to appear on the second line, and a character break on the third line. Rinse and repeat (it is that simple!).
(Note, though, that the formatting can be picky! No spaces between the time comma! I learned that lesson the hard way!)
More detailed instructions on the formatting type can be found at the YouTube Help Page on Closed Captioning.
The video above shows the details on how to insert the transcription into you current video. (It takes about 30 seconds if you have the video transcription formatted and ready!)
And that brings up an interesting point: Won’t that take a long time to format?
YouTube does provide a lot of resources to help with this at their Captioning Help Page, but my recommendation is to just outsource the entire video transcription task and formatting.
I pay about $3/minute for the full transcription and a formatted closed captioning transcription for YouTube. (Therefore, a 5 minute video costs about $15!).
That is cheaper than most articles I have outsourced.
And now we have written documents that are now associated directly with our YouTube video (and yes, the rumor is that Google CAN spider and index these subtitles!). You can also upload this same closed captioning file onto Google Video, too. (sure, you may not get much traffic from Google Videos, but it is something else that Google can index!).
And don’t forget that you STILL have a full version of the transcription which can be added as content to your current website, social content sites or even article directories.
This is so SEO Powerful and gives us the best of both worlds: Traffic and Conversion from Video, SEO from textual content. Be sure to add this to your SEO arsenol!
cheers…matt
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All 10 Parts (with full downloadable transcriptions) are now available to watch for free!
Go to: Getting on Page One of Google
http://www.SEOExciter.com
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Closed Captioning & Subtitles on YouTube Troubleshooting and Errors:
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Don't Buy Another Money Making Product Until You Watch These FREE Videos! |
Matt,
You material is the best. I have a membership with your tru-guru series and have learned stuff with you that other paid sites don’t even have. The detail, format and overall volume of material is well worth the price. In fact the material for this you tube lesson I have not seen anywhere. Thanks Matt
April 8th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Matt: Liked you video on captioning on YouTube. Since you can turn the captioning on and off, can the Google spiders still index your video with the captioning turned off on the screen?
Thanks Bill
April 9th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Hey Bill,
1) If you look at the source of the video pages, you will not see the closed captioning text anywhere. Therefore, IF google is indexing this, it is doing it “in the background”, not in traditional ways (therefore, if CC is turned on or off, it really shouldn’t matter).
2) So, is Google actually indexing it? I wanted to test it out…and I created a video about it, too:
http://www.matthewbredel.com/594/is-google-indexing-youtube-closed-captions.html
Hope this helps!
cheers…matt
April 9th, 2009 at 8:23 am
[...] a page of text per video minute, there is quickly a large volume of fully indexable content meaning a transcript can quickly and cheaply solve your video SEO problem. Powerful stuff for only a few [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
How do you change the font colour?
June 28th, 2009 at 6:12 am
In most cases, the only way to change the font color is to change it within your Wordpress theme itself. (this is usually done in the Style.css file under the Theme editor). Warning! You can really screw up your theme by editing these files if you don’t know what you are doing! cheers…matt
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 am
[...] a page of text per video minute, there is quickly a large volume of fully indexable content meaning a transcript can quickly and cheaply solve your video SEO problem. Powerful stuff for only a few [...]
August 15th, 2010 at 7:32 pm