Since global audiences speak different languages, translating your videos makes sense. If you only use English, you will miss out on the chance to reach over 70% audiences who speak other languages. Luckily you don’t have to break the bank to make your videos accessible in a different language.
There are three cost-effective alternatives to translating videos fully. First, you could use subtitle translation to help your audience understand the message in the video when words are inaudible or when the language or accent is foreign. Alternatively, you could use caption translation to offer descriptive information which helps audiences with hearing problems to understand what’s being said in the video. It is also a good idea to use closed captions which a viewer can turn on if they need a video to be translated. All you need to do is to upload a transcript which YouTube will sync with the video before putting time stamps on it.
Why You Should Translate Your Video
- You will rank higher against your competitors. If your competition only uses one language in videos, it lowers their ranking on search engines.
- You will be able to reach a global audience: It is very easy to reach audiences internationally with multilingual subtitles since 70% of YouTube users watch from countries that don’t speak English.
- Higher Conversion rates: Higher conversion rates occur when your video is ranked higher than that of competitors and if it reaches a global audience.
What Languages You Should Translate Your Captions Into
It can get quite confusing when picking a language to translate your video it into. For this reason, you should consider multiple factors before picking any language. First, think about the subject matter of your videos and if it is relevant to particular countries. If it is likely to appeal to them, translate into the languages spoken in those countries. You could also look at YouTube’s Analytics Demographics report to check where your viewers tune in from. If those audiences speak a different language than you do, you could use YouTube translation tools to enhance their experience. Further, you could find out which countries have most YouTube views. Such countries include France, India, Germany, Russia, South Korea and Japan.
It’s a good idea to use Spanish Subtitles
There are lots of languages spoken in the U.S., with Spanish being the second most popular language. You could use Spanish captions and subtitles to communicate with the over 50 million Spanish speakers across the country. Additionally, if the promotional videos popularizing your products will be in more than one language, it is important to use Spanish translations because the purchasing power of this demographic has increased in recent years.
Key word strategies for other languages
Please remember not to use the same SEO strategy that you use for English. This is because Google is not always the most popular search engine outside the United States. For example, Baidu gives a lot of weight to Meta- Tags and Yahoo! Japan favours the density of keywords. You should therefore keep in mind your target language’s when choosing your SEO strategy. Also, note that direct translations may appear as awkward phrases after translation to other languages.
Conclusion
Since most audiences (70%) are from countries that don’t speak English, translating videos into languages that they can understand will increase the number of viewers, search rank and SEO strategy. You don’t need to use a lot of money or hire professionals to do it since YouTube has tools that make the translation process easier. It is really that simple to boost your rankings.
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