A guide on how subtitling & voice-overs can improve your SEO

When it comes to SEO, subtitling and voice-over (VO) addition to your content may not be the first area of optimisation that jumps to your head. However, there are a number of benefits to approaching your video and audio content with subtitling and VO in mind. 

While some may be obvious, others can introduce surprising benefits to your SEO strategy, and will make you rethink how you can incorporate video/audio content on your company website. In this blog post, we start off with 5 common mistakes we see people make when it comes to VO and subtitling. 

We then move onto our top 5 highlights on how our language services can improve your search performance, user experience, and content strategy. Finally, we provide insight into some of the best techniques for optimising voiceover and subtitling for SEO.

What are some of the most common mistakes that businesses make when it comes to voiceover and subtitling SEO?

Not making use of keywords

When it comes to SEO, keywords are everything. So if you’re not using them in your voiceover and subtitling, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to improve your ranking. Make sure to include relevant keywords in both your voiceover and subtitles so that search engines can easily find and index your content.

Not optimising for mobile

More and more people are using their mobile devices to search the web, so it’s important to make sure that your voiceover and subtitling are optimised for mobile. This means using smaller file sizes and formats that can be easily played on all types of devices.

Not transcribing your audio

If you want search engines to be able to find and index your audio content, you need to make sure it’s transcribed. This way, they can read through the transcript and pick out any relevant keywords that you may have used. Transcribing your audio can also help you to identify any errors or issues that need to be fixed.

Not captioning your videos

If you’re not captioning your videos, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to improve your SEO. Captions help search engines to index and find your video content with relevant search terms, and they also make it more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Not using the right file formats

When it comes to voiceover and subtitling, you need to make sure you’re using the right file formats. Otherwise, your content may not be compatible with all devices and browsers. Stick to popular formats like MP3, WAV, and MPEG-4 so that you can reach the widest audience possible.

By understanding these pitfalls, you can approach your next project with new-found insight, and implement strategies that will help to improve your SEO. Subtitles and voice-overs are a great way to reach a wider audience and boost your visibility online, so make sure you’re making the most of them. 

Our trained specialists can help guide you through your project with sector expertise, while taking advantage of the industry’s best practices to ensure your content is performing beyond initial expectations.  

5 Ways subtitling & voice-over improve your SEO 

Subtitling & voice-over can make your content more engaging

With the inclusion of transcripts, closed captions, and audible descriptions, your content will be more engaging for viewers and easier to understand. Not only is this beneficial for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but it makes your content more accessible to a wider audience who speak other languages. 

In turn, this can help improve your SEO as search engines will index your content as being more relevant and user-friendly. By producing more engaging and accessible content, you will increase the likelihood that a wider audience will spend more time on your website. This will increase search engine metrics used to index your site such as engaged session time, and bounce rate.

Video and audio transcripts improve website search traffic

The inclusion of audio/video transcripts on your website can improve your search engine optimisation. This is because transcripts provide another avenue for search engines to find and index your content. SEO crawlers do not currently listen to the spoken material in your multimedia content, and so it is good practice to embed the text so that it can be taken advantage of when it comes to indexing.

Improve your off-page topic-clusters with paginated transcripts

With longer multimedia content, such as an extended video or a podcast. You can take advantage of that large body of text by breaking it up and housing it over several pages. By doing this you can narrow down, and create opportunities by targeting additional long-tail keywords that are related to your topic cluster. 

Imagine a topic cluster as the centrepiece to your mindmap. In this example we will use business sustainability. By linking multiple pages that relate to the topic of business sustainability, search engines recognise your site to have authority on that subject matter. By breaking your video down into multiple segments, and paginating your transcriptions, you can create clusters of information that will encourage users to navigate your website and engage with your related content.

Multimedia transcripts align your SEO keyword strategy

While watching videos is fun, it can be difficult to prioritise what you want targeted when there are so many keywords being spoken throughout them. Transcripts make this process easier by making frequent words stand out and giving a sense of where they’re located in the transcript. 

For example if someone says “sustainable business” but also includes phrases like “ecological” or even just uses capital letters more often than lowercase, then adjusting your page’s SEO elements will help match these changes. Some examples of the SEO elements you can change include:

• Page Title
• Meta Tag/Page Description
• H/Title Tags
• Alt Text
• Video Title
• Video Description
• URL Structure

Transcriptions simplify and enhance content creation

Transcripts are a great starting point for developing SEO-friendly content. This is because they can provide lots of derivative works that will help boost your site’s search presence, depth and reputation. 

Consider transcribing webinars, to yield long form transcripts as well as case studies or support documents. By taking this approach, you will have more material available around your relevant business events and in turn, can use them to promote future webinars. Some examples of supporting derivative content can include:

• Blog Posts
• Supportive Documents
• White Papers and Reports
• Case Studies
• Infographics

What are the best techniques for optimising voice-over and subtitling for SEO?

Use keywords throughout your video content

When it comes to improving your search engine optimisation, using relevant keywords is essential. This is also true for voiceover and subtitling. By including keywords that are relevant to your business and what you do, you can ensure that your content is more easily found by those who are searching for it.

Optimise your video title and description

The title and description of your video are also important for SEO purposes. This is what will appear in the search results, so it’s important to make sure that they are optimised for the keywords you want to target.

Use transcripts or closed captions

Transcripts or closed captions can be extremely helpful for SEO. They provide a written record of the audio content of your video, which can be indexed by search engines and used to help people find your video.

Create and caption your videos in multiple languages

If you want to reach a global audience, then creating videos in multiple languages is a great way to improve your SEO. This will ensure that people from all over the world can find and watch your videos.