video captions

An easy account of how important transcripts are for videos

With video broadcasting becoming more and more popular it is projected to claim more than 80% of website traffic in 2019, so the question is how do you get your video to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) above everyone else’s?

How To Increase Your Video SEO The Affordable Way

Hiring a professional and affordable transcription service like Virtuadmin will give you a valuable transcript for your video providing accessibility, indexing and higher search engine results.

5 SEO Tips for Videos: How Google Ranks Them & How to Optimize

Videos are becoming increasingly important for B2B marketing. Companies with dedicated video marketing strategies generate more leads, earn more revenue, and enjoy better brand awareness than those engaging in all other forms of marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are great places to get eyes on your video content, but prospects aren’t necessarily in work- or buy-mode as they scroll through these platforms.

We do know, however, that 90% of B2B decision-makers use search to research business decisions. To reap the benefits of video marketing, your videos must be optimised for search. By following a few best practices for video SEO, you’ll enjoy more visible video search results and drive more organic traffic—and qualified leads—to your video content.

How Does Google Rank Videos?

In its general search and video search functions, Google ranks videos using the same ranking factors as written content—content quality, the number of backlinks, and RankBrain are the most important signals. When hosting videos on your site, the tasks for optimizing video content are similar to those for written content and images.

Similar, but not identical. Here are five steps you should take to improve your search rankings so your videos stand out in search results:

1. Transcribe Your Video Content

Providing both a video and transcription on a single page offers dual benefits: it caters to different reader preferences, and it makes video content more likely to appear in general Google searches.

Video transcriptions can be optimized for search in the same way as any other text-based site content. While this may seem to break duplicate content rules, transcriptions actually provide a good user experience by catering to different learning styles. While some visitors may prefer videos, others may prefer reading. In fact, 85% of business executives prefer reading over watching videos when making business decisions.

When transcribing video content, there are two approaches you can take:

Provide a full, word-for-word transcription as Moz does for their Whiteboard Friday videos.
Provide text highlights like Content Marketing Institute does for their This Old Marketing podcast.

Full transcripts provide more engagement SEO opportunities, while highlights are good for long videos and can encourage more views by teasing readers with compelling content that’s discussed in more detail in the video. Ultimately, use the approach your audience prefers: you can poll them to find out, or do some A/B testing to see which approach drives the kind of engagement you’re looking for.

Read the remaining 4 more tips for video optimisation on Marketo Marketing Blog.

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What is a .srt file and how to create one free

How to create a .srt file — What is a .srt file and how to create one

A .srt file is a common name for the extension SubRip computer files and a commonly used file format for subtitles or closed captions on videos. The benefit of using a .srt file is that when it is added to a video to create the captions it enables search engine crawler bots to index your video more accurately due to the additional text file.

Although automatic captions are generated and all videos that contain speech when uploaded, Google and all other search engines do not consider them accurate enough to use as reliable information about your video content.

How to create a .srt file

Creating a .srt file to add to your video is quite easy and involves six easy steps. These 6 steps are taken from a post by Andrew Meer on Techwalla

Step 1

Open Notepad by clicking “Start,” “All Programs,” “Accessories” and “Notepad.”

Step 2

Divide each subtitle phrase into numbered sections when creating an SRT file. Type “1” (without quotes) and then press “Enter” to start creating the first subtitle phrase.

Step 3

Enter the time span to display the subtitle phrase when playing the movie. For example, if you want the first subtitle phrase to be displayed from the second minute to the third minute of the movie, type “00:02:00 –> 00:03:00” (without quotes) and press “Enter.”

Step 4

Type the subtitle phrase and press “Enter” to finish creating the first subtitle phrase.

Step 5

Type “2” (without quotes) for the second subtitle phrase and follow steps 3 and 4 to create the second subtitle phrase. Do the same for the other subtitle phrases that you want to create, but ensure that you separate the subtitle phrases into numbered sections.

Step 6

Save the file in the SRT file format after you finish creating it. To do so, click “Start” and then click “Save.” Select “All Files” from the “Save as type” drop-down menu. Next, type a name into “File name” field and type “.srt” (without quotes) after it. Click “Save.”

Conclusion – Outsource?

Depending on the length of your video, podcast, or webinar depends on the length of time it will take to actually produce the transcript to add to your video. Outsourcing the creation of the transcript process may well be worth considering.

At Virtuadmin I have created many transcripts for closed captioning purposes. If you would like to hire me to quickly create your transcript please get in touch at cyberspaceayuda@gmail.com. Alternatively, I have active freelancer profiles on People Per Hour and Fiverr and would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the process.

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9 Top Reasons to Add a Transcript to Your Video

Top marketing professionals have voiced their opinions of YouTube Marketing for this coming year, 2017.

In an article written by Lisa. D. Jenkins, in Social Media Today, where the Pros have made their predictions in what they think will happen to video marketing. Although they are talking about YouTube, the second biggest search engine to Google, it is largely about video marketing for businesses and the marketing direction it could take.

These are all valid predictions, YouTube is a great way for increasing visibility of your product or service, and love when these predictions come out in the early parts of the year, this year being no different.

The 9 Top YouTube Predictions for 2017 by the Pros are:-

YouTube Solidifies Its Social Network Status
YouTube Explores Long-form Television-style Content
YouTube Channels Embrace Quality Over Quantity
YouTube Integrates Third-party Software to Improve Broadcast Quality
YouTube Marketers Focus on Educational Content Delivery
Influencer Marketing Evolves Into Exclusive Partnership Programming on YouTube
Increased Socialisation Features Improve YouTube Engagement
YouTube Promotes Longer Engagement Views
YouTube Improves Social Features for Creators and Fans

With statistics in 2016 for the total number of hours of video watched being 3.25 billion, combined with the vital fact that YouTube and other video hosting platforms do not index videos with automatically generated captions.

What does this mean for marketers, entrepreneurs and anyone else wishing to utilise the power of video marketing on YouTube and such like? Upload a transcript in the format of a text (.txt) file to your video.Video search engine bots, just like Google crawler bots that are curious about your content and how to index it, therefore getting higher search engine rankings, cannot read images, GIFs or hear the audio speech. What the SEO bots rely on when the post is not in a contextual format, is text, tags, meta and other more in-depth search engine strategies.

YouTube search engine bots, just like Google crawler bots that are curious about your content and how to index it, therefore getting higher search engine rankings, cannot read images, GIFs or hear the audio speech in that video. What the SEO bots rely on when the post is not in a readable text format containing keywords, tags, meta and other more in-depth search engine strategies.

In number 3 on the predictions list, YouTube embraces quality over quantity, adding an additional transcript immediately tells YouTube about your content, therefore giving it a higher quality rating over others that have no transcript at all.

Number 5 on the predictions list, ‘YouTube Marketers Focus on Educational Content Delivery’ expert Zontee Hou’s prediction, explained “instead of the 30-second video demos of recipes that have taken over Facebook, success on YouTube will require companies to create 1- to 5-minute in-depth demos, courses, and series that answer the viewers’ questions”.

So for educational content that you want to be visible to everyone, even if it is 5 minutes long, you could add a transcript to it for just £5 if you are paying in Sterling, or $5 if paying in United States Dollars.

With The total number of people who use YouTube – 1,300,000,000 and over 30 million visitors per day, can you afford not to add a transcript?

If you have any questions at all about how to add a transcript, how to create one, or about my video transcription service, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

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Closed captions: Transcripts Aid Learning for Almost all Students

Most college and university students who use closed captions and transcripts on video and multimedia find them helpful as a learning tool, despite them not regularly being made available, according to new research from Oregon State University.

One of the first surveys of its type, of 2,124 students across 15 public and private universities nationwide, found that 98.6 percent of students say captions are helpful, with 75 percent of them noting that they use captions as a learning aid in face-to-face and online classrooms. For video transcripts, students referenced the tool as a learning aid 85 percent of the time.

More than half of students surveyed said captions help by improving comprehension. The most common reasons students use captions are to help them focus, retain information and overcome the poor audio quality of the videos, while transcripts are often used as study guides and to find and retain information.

The national study, conducted by the Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit in collaboration with 3Play Media, also shows that among the students surveyed, only 13 percent had registered with an office of disability services and less than 12 percent require academic accommodations. Of all respondents, 19 percent cited having difficulty with hearing and 37 percent have difficulty with vision.

"Many people associate the use of closed captions and transcripts only with disability accommodation, and that can mean they are not made widely available," said Katie Linder, director of the Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit and author of the study. "One hope for this study was to help educate university administrators about how a range of students are using these tools, and that making them more available could help more learners."

According to Linder, closed captions and transcripts are now a legal obligation for universities that receive federal funding when they create videos for courses and for institutional purposes, to ensure that students with disabilities have equal access.
"Despite this, many institutions do not understand the legal obligation, or they only associate these tools with disability accommodation and do not consider how they could be helpful to all students," Linder said.

The study found that almost 100 percent of survey respondents had at least one course, either face-to-face or online, that included some video content. However, more than one-quarter of respondents were unsure about the availability of closed captions and almost one in five were not sure about the availability of transcripts of the videos in their courses.

"Not only is captioning often necessary for accessibility compliance, but, as the study shows, 75 percent of students use captions as a learning aid to improve their focus, retention, engagement, and comprehension when watching videos for class," said Lily Bond, director of marketing at 3Play Media, a company that provides closed captioning, transcription and subtitling solutions.

"As the use of video in higher education becomes more commonplace, making captions and transcripts more widely available should be a priority for institutions."

The survey was voluntary, conducted online and contained 46 questions. All study participants were college and university undergraduate and graduate students, mainly undergraduate, over the age of 18, and the majority of them came from the public, four-year institutions.

"In many ways, this study is just scratching the surface of what we know about how students use and perceive closed captions and transcripts in the college and university classroom," Linder said. "Additional research related to student use and perceptions of closed captions and transcripts is welcomed and encouraged."

A summary of the findings is available online at http://bit.ly/2eKmswJ, as well as a downloadable version of the full report.

* This report first appeared on http://phys.org/news on the 1st November 2016.
** Header image designed by Virtuadmin

Transcription – Is It a Necessity For Your Business?

Yes, you do! Transcription services, freelance or provided by specialist businesses, transcription is growing in demand each and every day.

Advancements in technology mean quicker and faster, more capabilities and devices and so on, digital technology grows in cyberspace. This provides more opportunities for the transcriptionist to provide digital transcription services remotely at competitive cheaper costs.

Transcribing is a niche skill-set that is not really spoken about but such a vital expertise that requires a lot of training, fast typing, and typing experience. Digital technology advancements are now enabling virtually anything to be recorded and if narration or natural occurring speech is within that recording then it should be transcribed.

Entrepreneurs, Business Coaches, Bloggers, Marketing Experts and much more are all utilising transcription services for the benefit of their businesses. They record podcasts, videos, webinars and video blogs for clients and readers. They hold teleconferences, teleseminars and business meetings for accuracy and productivity. Eighty-eight percent of businesses say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy; all should be accompanied by a transcript.

Here are the top 7 advantages of a transcript:

It gives you a permanent hard copy of what was spoken. What if the audio recording got damaged, lost or recorded over by mistake?
Instant accessibility for the hearing impaired to partake and absorb the valuable information.
Using a Search Engine on the Internet can only search in a text it cannot search audio at this moment in time. (I’m sure it will come as image search is already available!) Adding an accurate transcript increases your chances of your audio, video, podcast, webinar being discovered because of the extra information held within that additional transcript rather than just the title and sub-title text for details about what it is about.
Having a transcript gives you a document to refer to, scribble on, copy, make notes etcetera. Instead of searching through the audio for a certain point that caught your attention you can quickly scan through the transcript instead.
Provides a great resource for repurposing content to create Tweets, blog post ideas, e-books, creating online courses or writing white papers.
For marketers offering online e-learning courses, a transcript can be a tremendous incentive to encourage enrollment onto your program.
For a Business meeting, it clarifies actions points for the participants and employees and also gives an accurate account of who said what during the session.
Hopefully, these top seven advantages of hiring a transcription service for you to add a transcript to your audio or video has convinced you of the benefits to justify the initial cost of getting your recorded audio, video or other formats transcribed.

Virtuadmin offers a professional and secure quality low-cost transcription service; it is my passion to provide you with the most accurate transcript possible. With over 20 years experience audio typing, transcribing and video captioning Virtuadmin are flexible and would love to work with you, either for either a one-off transcription or on a long-term collaboration.

If you would like to make an inquiry or get a free quote, there is a contact form in the ‘Contact Me’ section of my website and would be pleased to assist you. All audios and videos are secure with Virtuadmin with the latest firewall protection systems for enhanced security. Why not let me give you a quote?

How subtitles in videos can increase engagement | MarTech Advisor

Why Add a Transcript to your video?

Why transcribe your video for closed captions

What are “closed-captions” and why would you hire a freelance transcriptionist to produce a transcript for your video? That’s what I want to answer and why an accurate transcript of the speech spoken in your video helps it rank higher in your niche when someone makes a relevant search. Marketing in the new-age digital has been rapid in development and utilisation has expanded over the years.

To add closed captions (or subtitles) to your video as opposed to open simply means to add visual text to your video that the viewer has the option to them on or off. Open captions are burnt onto the video and you don’t have that option although they are used for example in films or programs that are in a different native language to the viewer, which I for one are grateful for!

Late Senator wants closed captioning of in-flight movies

Closed-captions were originally developed for the hearing-impaired and in years gone by in the early 1980s provided by Digital Teletext services essentially for this purpose. The late former senator “Thomas Harkin” complained that on airline flights passengers with hearing impairments couldn’t watch the films on-board because they lacked subtitles.

Today transcripts have additional resource value and have many different time-saving purposes like Tweets; blog posts ideas; social media post headlines; incentive to potential clients to participate in a webinar; marketing interviews that are transcribed can often be enough to provide literature to create a course/e-course; material that can be printed into a hard copy and provide a point of reference are to name a few. The bonuses of a transcript in itself that are naturally included in your text document for a one-off fee, probably more affordable fee than that of a video editing business or outsourcing organisation.

So why add a transcript to a video? Video and video marketing has evolved rapidly since the coming of the digital age and with the Internet, mobile phones that can record video and upload it to the net pretty much instantly are all channels for businesses and marketers to get their product or service out there to a much larger audience than ever before.

Some facts and figures about video marketing, the first three are taken from Adeliestudios.com where they published a post titled “The Top 15 Video Marketing Statistics for 2015”.

2015 is The Year of Video Marketing. – HubSpot Marketing
70% of marketing professionals report that video converts better than any other medium. – MarketingProfs
When marketers included a video in an email, the click-through rate increased by 200% – 300% – Forrester
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. – YouTube (That’s a lot of cat videos!)
59% of senior executives prefer to watch video instead of reading text, if both are available on the same page. – Forbes Insight (Does that therefore mean that 41% would prefer to read a text document if both are available on the same page? Comments welcome at the bottom of this post.)
Average time spent on mobile devices is 40 minutes per session. – DMR
85 Countries have launches a local version of YouTube. – DMR
96% of Business to Business are planning to use video in thier marketing in the next year. – HubSpot
52% of Marketing Professionals name video as the best type of content for return of investment (ROI).
That, by 2019, video content will account for roughly 80-90% of internet traffic? – B2C (Cisco Study)

Anyway, so all that said how does a transcript help Search Engine Optimization when its included on a video? It’s about accurate text when you add the transcript to your embedded video. The search engine bots like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Explorer and others they have more content information due to the transcribed text document and this enable them to rank your video higher because there is more video content information. Having a video transcribed by the nature of the script it is keyword rich because it is your niche that you are speaking about. This could be personal or professional, for profit or for non-profit but a transcript will give search engine trawlers a lot more detail other than that of just the title, subtitle, and of course the video and its content.

So if you are not currently using video in your marketing strategy for your business hopefully the advantages bullet-pointed above have given you some thought for inclusion of video marketing with a transcript in your future marketing strategy?

Book Review of Transcription Crash Course: Starting A General Transcription Business

Book Review of Transcription Crash Course: Starting A General Transcription Business

Alicia Jay, newvaadvice.com

This week I’ve decided to write a book review on an e-book that changed my life. That’s right, I said it changed my life! You may or may not know that transcription is my main bread and butter. How di …