Benefits of subtitling your videos? [CC]

NathanielGE

NathanielGE

I've Got It
So I just sat there subtitling my latest upload. It gave me a throwback to my video and film production course at university and having to transcribe long interviews for projects lol.

I'm wondering what do you think the benefits are of doing this for each of your videos?

Of course it means you could potentially have a whole new audience watch your videos. Perhaps people who want to learn English.

For example I work with many Spanish, Italian, Polish guys and was surprised that when I would mention going to the cinema they would only feel comfortable going if there were subtitles. Even though they speak pretty much fluent, perfect English.

Do you think people actually use the CC feature?

I know this is something Lilly Sing (Superwoman) has also started doing to widen her audience and inclusion.

Subtitles for SEO?

I read here at some point that if you transcribe your videos, YouTube uses the words as extra SEO to see what exactly what your video is about and it can help in the search.

Is that true or just a myth?
 
I've been using them for a bit and some viewers use them and comment on them, I even took to throwing up a text screen at the start of the video saying they were there for people to use if they wanted them. Some people said they enjoyed them and it may have held their viewing till the end of the video I guess.

I asked the question recently if they had any effect in regards to SEO and some guy chimed up that he was certain they did. If that's the case and you have the time I think it's a good practice to get an upper edge.

If your time restricted I think it would also be OK to just transcript a few of the important sentences that showcase words of what your video is about for SEO and not even mention that you run CC.
 
I have added subtitles to most of my videos so deaf people can also understand them, and sometimes it's better because I unconciously make a lot of grammar mistakes when I talk or talk in a tone that's different than the sentence.

My current subtitles are in English but I hope I can add other languages as well in the future such as French, Japanese and Greek for example. Not everyone understands English and it would be cool to have an audience from all around the world :U
 
Since the main benefits might have been posted above, I just want to add that it might help with people who likes to eat them chips when watching stuff :D

"Two videos with the same subject, this video got no subbie so nah, I'ma pick this one up that has them subbie "
 
NathanielGE said:
Subtitles for SEO?

I read here at some point that if you transcribe your videos, YouTube uses the words as extra SEO to see what exactly what your video is about and it can help in the search.

Is that true or just a myth?
Click to expand...

Most sources I've read say that this is true. If you have things mentioned in subtitles that aren't mentioned in the title, tags, or description, your video can still rank for those things if there are submitted subtitles. This would support that subtitles have some value.

However, my understanding as well is that subtitles just help with context rather than how high you are. So subtitles help YouTube decide what keywords are relevant, but not necessarily how high you should rank for those keywords
 
The subtitles are helping but it has to do with your audience. I am Greek but I can speak and understand the english videos. For me is pointless to subtitle my videos with english subs because there are loads of englis speaking videos. For you a good option is to subtitle your videos with languages like spanish or russian if you can. There are many people who speak these languages but they don't speak english.
 
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