How to Add a YouTube Transcript File to Your Video

YouTube subtitles
YouTube has an automatic subtitle/transcript generator that uses Google’s speech-to-text algorithm. Its main goal is accessibility, to help people who are hearing impaired or speak another language find out what your video is about. It is also used for search engine indexing and thus can help with your SEO.

Unfortunately, the software’s ability to automatically generate a meaningful transcript from a video soundtrack leaves a bit to be desired. You can take a look at the transcript it generates for your video, and you’ll see what I mean! In a video I posted about building websites, the automatically generated transcript talked about mining Y Texas! None of these terms were mentioned in my video! If you want to optimize your video effectively, the best thing to do is to create a YouTube transcript file and tailor it to the correct keywords that you want search engines to use to index your video. This helps all concerned. Fortunately, this is quite easy to do and doesn’t require any expensive software.

If you haven’t already, upload your video to YouTube, put your keywords in the tag field, and give it a meaningful description in the usual way. Include a link to your website in the description field.

Step 1 – Keyword Research
As with any search engine optimization technique, you should start with keyword research on the topic of your video. Identify a main keyword you are targeting and two or three secondary keywords.

Step 2 – Create a transcript file
YouTube will allow you to import a simple text document as a transcript file, so you don’t need any complicated software to create it. Simply use notepad or similar to create a simple .txt document and write a transcript for your video. Make sure your transcript uses the keywords you identified in Step 1. If your video includes voiceover, try to include this hyphen as accurately as possible, which will give the software the best chance of timing with your video.

Just in case, name the file after your main keyword.

Step 3Locate your YouTube video

1. Sign in to YouTube
2. Expand your channel. In the upper right corner, select the My videos option. This will show you a list of all your videos, including the one you want to upload the transcript for.
3. Select your uploaded video that you want to optimize and click Edit information
4. Select the titles and subtitles desk

Step 4 – Upload the YouTube transcript file

1. Select the edit captions/subtitles from the top menu in the middle
2. under Add a subtitle track on the right, click Add new captions or transcript button
3. Use the Surf button to find your txt file on your computer, which you created in Step 2
4. Select the radio button option marked transcript file. This is the one that allows you to upload a text file instead of a specialized transcript format
5. Click Upload file and give it a name so you can recognize it
   

   Google and the other search engines will now be able to index your video sensibly, using the keywords in your transcript file. It will also make a lot more sense for viewers who are hard of hearing and foreign language!