Video and SEO: Transcription Steps

I like trilogies. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Legally Blonde…

Yeah. I know. Crazy but true. They really made three Legally Blonde movies. Look it up. And before you go telling me there are four Indiana Jones movies, let me tell you that fourth one doesn’t even EXIST as far as I’m concerned. C’mon, Inca cosmonauts? Seriously? What the heck ever.

Anyhoo, trilogies are awesome.  And therefore I add this, a third entry into my newly named “Adobe Soundbooth CS4 Metadata Transcription Trilogy!!!”

In all seriousness, my boss Tim pointed out that I never got round to fully explaining how this wacky and fun transcription business fully relates to SEO. That Tim’s a clever fella. It’s like he’s written about this himself or something (shameless book plug #1).

So! On with the show. In the first entry, we learned the ups and downs of robot transcribers. In the second, we tried it ourselves with absurd, mildly offensive results. In this entry, we’ll go over what you can do with the transcription results to improve the odds of your content needle being found in the digital haystack that is the internet.

First:

Take that transcription you generated and fix it!

As we harped on incessantly in the last blog entry, you are quite likely to get some goofy stuff in your transcription as your robot transcriber has a lousy sense of context. Read it over and fix any ridiculous stuff. Or, if you’re a Dadaist, leave as-is and confound those who try to find you with the beauty of the absurd!

Second:

Create a keyword rich title for your transcript.

The topic of keywords is itself complex, written about extensively in many places, including Tim’s new book! (shameless book plug #2). For several reasons, putting the word “video” in the title is a good idea. One of those reasons is that it’s a video, and it’s friendly to tell search engines that information. Or fine, don’t. See if I care.

Third:

Include a short summary of your project.

Write a brief and keyword-rich summary of your piece, which will be included along with the transcript in the metadata. Sometimes people don’t explicitly say things that would help identify the piece to search engines, and a summary can help a lot with that. For instance, folks are unlikely to exclaim “Hey, we’re in a bowling alley!” regardless of how true that may be. Isn’t that a shame? So in your summary, mentioning things like the location can help the search engine a bunch.

Fourth:

Do it! Do it! I dare ya! Post your video.

There are different ways of associating the metadata with your video file, depending on what you’re using, and a quick google search should help you out if you’re using something wacky. We use TubeMogul over here, and we love it dearly as it allows you to post to multiple video hosting sites simultaneously. You have to set up your account with those places first, but once they’re set up, you’re good to go. Now each of those sites will have a place to add a description of your video, and that’s where your handy transcription and summary come in handy. Copy and paste your info into the description area, and watch as you are rocketed to internet stardom! Or not. But I bet you get way more hits if you do this than if you don’t.

Try it! Tell us what happens in a comment or @mightybytes.com on Twitter.