[Infographic] How Captions Improve SEO
Updated: July 9, 2019
In recent years, the number of devices with screens has exploded, correlating to a mass consumption of video. By 2019, video will make up 80% of all consumer internet traffic.
Video is everywhere and it will only continue to proliferate our screens.
But with so much video content being disseminated, it can be hard to keep your content searchable and engaging. That’s why captioning is becoming ever more important for improving video SEO.
Video SEO means optimizing your channel, playlist, meta data, description, and videos themselves for search. Like with any other kind of content, video SEO is measured by your website or channel’s perceived authority and relevance.
The downside of video content is that bots can’t read the content of your video unless you provide them with a text version of your video that bots can use to index.
Bots will use both on-page and off-page tactics to rank videos.
Transcripts and captions help video SEO with both on-page and off-page tactics. Transcripts enhance SEO because they integrate keyword phrases throughout the page, create more interconnected web pages, increase web page authority and, like captions, increase user engagement.
By adding transcripts to their web pages, This American Life saw a significant increase in inbound traffic and user engagement. In fact, 6.26% of all unique visitor who came from search traffic landed on a transcript page.
If you are experiencing stagnant growth with your video content, it may be time to experiment with transcripts and captions.

Get all the SEO benefits without publishing a transcript!
That’s right! You no longer need to publish a transcript of your video on the same page to climb the ranks in keyword searches! Our newest feature, the SEO Embed, injects a hidden transcript into your video that shows up in search engines but not on the page. The SEO Embed is included in the cost of captioning and transcription. If you’re a current 3Play Media customer, you can get started boosting your video rank with the SEO Embed right away! If you’re new to 3Play Media, you can find out more about our captioning and transcription services and jump on the video SEO bandwagon in no time.
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