Do captions really matter? In video posted on your website, it can be one of the most valuable steps you take to ensure you are communicating with your entire audience. Videos have become an essential component of your business. You don’t want to miss key opportunities once people get to your website.
What Does Captioning Do for You, Then?
Captioning is the process of breaking down your transcript into chunks, allowing you to add a frame by frame dialogue to them. It all syncs with your video and audio to ensure a seamless way of communicating. Captions are different from a transcript. A transcript is generally added to your page and offers a simple play by play that people can read to learn what’s in the video. Both serve a good purpose and, in most cases, both are ideal.
Captions are an exceptional tool for several reasons. Consider how they can help you with any video you post online.
#1: They help contribute to search engine rankings. These words include your keywords naturally. They also help to show the search engines what your video is about. You may know how important Google thinks the video is. This makes it easy to manage your rankings.
#2: Not everyone has the luxury of sound. For those who are unable to hear, providing a way for them to communicate and share information is simply good measure. You want your website to be accessible to everyone who wants to use it.
#3: You want to capture people who can’t listen right now. It’s easy to watch a video online if there is captioning available even if you cannot listen to it. Whether you are at work or school, or just in a crowded area, everyone has had to rush to hit the mute button on a video before. Without captioning, you miss that audience.
It is also important to recognize that captioning is also working to enhance a person’s response to your video. When they land on your site to see the video, they are more likely to stick around and watch it with captioning in place. And, while they do that, they may start to click around to find other interesting things. That’s exactly what you want them to do, after all.
Video is a key component of your marketing and audience engagement. Just make sure you do it 100 percent of the way. That means including transcriptions and captioning on your page and in your videos. It does not necessarily take long or cost much, but it can be an important step.
