Using video transcripts v captions and avoiding duplicate content?
-
Part 1: After editing a You Tube transcript, I typically re-upload as a caption file (with time codes)...for SEO does it matter whether you upload as a transcript v. captions? Is one better than the other?
Part 2: If you upload a transcript (or caption) to YouTube, then post that video/transcript in your blog, wouldn't you get pinged for duplicate content?
-
Sigh of relief. Thanks, Phil!
-
Hi Jennifer,
In short - the answer to both your questions is No. What you're doing is absolutely fine
With YouTube Closed captions - you can upload multiple files - covering multiple languages/descriptive transcripts/speech transcripts. All sorts if you really want to. There is no difference from an SEO perspective between the "captions" model with timecodes or simply the text "transcript". Both are ultimately read like copy text for the video.
The YouTube video embed on an external site is read as an independent media element with the uploaded transcript file as meta-data applied to that media. Even if the on-page copy contains the identical text, it appears as a different form to the engines and is valuable to users as well - there is no "duplicate content" risk, as the content is presented in totally different formats.
I would continue with what you're currently doing - which sounds good :).
Phil
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content or an update ???
Buying Guide and Product Category page competing for the same keyword ? Got a “nuts and bold website” selling basic stuff. Imagine selling simple nuts, bolts and washers (the little ring that goes in between) in different metals. Imagine a website with a very wide and deep line of these simple products. For long tail keywords we rank well (Example: 0.25 inch bolts). For the keyword: “Nuts bolts” our main category page use to rank well low 1<sup>st</sup> page to second page up against the big guys (Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, some drug store who may have a mix pack of nuts and bolts, but still Google don’t see the difference and list 2 pages each for these guys). But then in mid-February there were an update and suddenly our “Buying guide for nuts and bolts” rank higher and started to compete with our own product category page. That was never our intention. These two pages now compete for the ranking on page 4<sup>th</sup>. Clearly there were more words on the buying guide page but no changes had been made to it for well months or years. To make up for it some more words were added to the category page, but of cause there is only so many way you can fraise words about “nuts and bolts” without sounding a bit duplicate/re-writing. So what do I do now ?? Clearly the product category page is the one we like to rank highest with the guide a close 2nd. Most customer don’t need the buying guide but it is good to have and great support as we got lot of good comments from customer who read it. Made a link to the buying guide from the category page and wise verses. The category page got an embedded video. Moz list the page authority for the category page to 16 and 1 for the buying guide but clearly G see it differently. Already tried to change the Meta Tag Title and Description a little but it is hard to do if the word “Nuts Bolts” is to appear in the description or people don’t know what to expect. Could just insert a “do not index” for the buying guide but not a good long term solution. Unfortunately I am out of imagination at this point. Any good suggestions ?? Thanks, Kim Any good suggestions ???
Technical SEO | | KimX0 -
Duplicate content and rel canonicals?
Hi. I have a question relating to 2 sites that I manage with regards to duplicate content. These are 2 separate companies but the content is off a data base from the one(in other words the same). In terms of the rel canonical, how would we do this so that google does not penalise either site but can also have the content to crawl for both or is this just a dream?
Technical SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
Content Duplication and Canonical Tag settings
Hi all, I have a question regarding content duplication.My site has posted one fresh content in the article section and set canonical in the same page for avoiding content duplication._But another webmaster has taken my post and posted the same in his site with canonical as his site url. They have not given to original source as well._May I know how Google will consider these two pages. Which site will be affected with content duplication by Google and how can I solve this issue?If two sites put canonical tags in there own pages for the same content how the search engine will find the original site which posted fresh content. How can we avoid content duplication in this case?
Technical SEO | | zco_seo0 -
What could be the cause of this duplicate content error?
I only have one index.htm and I'm seeing a duplicate content error. What could be causing this? IUJvfZE.png
Technical SEO | | ScottMcPherson1 -
Hiding Duplicate Content using Javascript
We have e-commerce site selling books. Besides basic information on books, we have content for “About the book” , “Editorial Reviews”, “About the author” etc. But the content in all these section are duplicate and are available on all sites selling similar books. Our question is: 1.Should we worry about the content being duplicate?2.If yes, then will it by a good idea to hide this duplicate content using javascript or iframe?
Technical SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
What to do about similar content getting penalized as duplicate?
We have hundreds of pages that are getting categorized as duplicate content because they are so similar. However, they are different content. Background is that they are names and when you click on each name it has it's own URL. What should we do? We can't canonical any of the pages because they are different names. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Should I build a new site?
I'm currently working on a site which is built using Zen Cart. The client also has another version which has the same products on it. The product descriptions and the vast majority of the text has been re-written. I've used the duplicate content tool and these are the results: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7ee1f07a131 0000a7ec1f07a931 92.31% Total HTML similarity: 76.33% Standard text similarity: 66.72% Smart text similarity: 45.81% Total text similarity 56.27% I considered using a different eCommerce system like Magento or Volusion. So I had a look at a few templates, chose one and then used the tool again and got the following: HTML fingerprint: 0000a7e41b012111 0000a7ec1f07a931 72.00% Total HTML similarity: 64.65% Standard text similarity: 11.69% Smart text similarity: 17.90% Total text similarity 14.80% Do you think its worth doing this? thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | TheYeti0 -
Avoiding duplicate content/same pages
hi I have been checking through all the Q and A but i i'm still not sure how you get http://www.domain.co.uk/index.html to be just http://www.domain.co.uk/? Do you add canonical to the index page to point to the page you prefer and then add a 301 redirect? thanks
Technical SEO | | challen0