Reasons Why Your Videos Need Subtitles

Adding subtitles to your video is a tedious task, and you may have found yourself questioning why you need it. There has been a boom of video content. And 80% of YouTube visits come from outside the United States. Because of these, adding subtitles to video content is pretty much standard practice. Here are 5 reasons why your videos need subtitles:

1. Consumers like subtitles

The most important reason why your videos need subtitles is because your audience loves it. Verizon Media conducted a study and found that 69% of consumers prefer to watch videos without sound when in public, and 25% prefer to do so even when in private. Furthermore, as many as 80% of consumers said they were more likely to finish watching a video if there were subtitles. This makes adding subtitles to your videos important as it means your audience can watch and enjoy your videos even with sound turned off.

2. Subtitles make your content accessible

Here’s a quick video to illustrate our point:

How many of you stopped watching the video after the subtitles stopped appearing?

According to the World Health Organisation, More than 5% of the world’s population (466 million people) experience hearing loss. Including subtitles in your videos immediately makes your content accessible to a huge population of people who otherwise would not be able to understand your video content.

Adding subtitles does not only make your content more accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Sometimes, people simply do not have the option to turn the sound on when watching a video (like forgetting to bring your earphones on a train ride, or watching Facebook videos during lectures, we’ve all been there). Adding subtitles will consequently increase average watch time and engagement.

Video captions can either be open or closed, and it is important to know the difference if you’re producing video content. You can read about the difference, and when to use which in our post here.

3. Subtitles lead to better engagement for your videos

Not everyone learns the same way. Some people are auditory learners, while others are visual learners who find it easier to absorb content by seeing. When your video has subtitles, you can be sure that everyone (auditory and visual!) will receive the intended message. Naturally, when people comprehend you content better, it is more likely they will watch your video to completion and engage with it.

Also, not everyone is a native speaker of your language. Adding subtitles can greatly help people who are not familiar, or learning your language, understand your video better.

4. Adding subtitles in different languages will increase your global reach

As mentioned, not everyone is a native speaker of your language. Imagine how many more people your content could reach by providing subtitles in multiple languages.

In 2021, YouTube also introduced an update to upgrade its search for translated videos: “We’re starting to show search results from other languages with automatically translated captions, titles and descriptions when relevant content in the local language isn’t available.” This means your content will definitely have an edge over others with SEO-friendly subtitles.

5. Subtitles are key to improving SEO performance

The last reason why videos need subtitles may not be as obvious. Subtitles can help your video secure a better ranking on search engines. By reaching more people and have more people watch your video to completion (with the help of subtitles), this will help to increase your videos’ ranking on Google.

Algorithm aside, Google also indexes subtitles added to videos in text format (.srt files), which makes a difference in helping people find your video. Naturally, with English subtitles, you would be targeting English keywords. If you were to also include subtitles in French, Spanish, Mandarin, you can also target these local SEO keywords, helping you reach French, Spanish, and Mandarin speaking audiences too.

Using Auris AI to create subtitles easily

Now that you know the importance of adding subtitles to your videos, it’s time to get to work. Unlike what you may think, subtitling your content does not need to be time-consuming.

Auris AI is a user-friendly, fast, and accurate subtitling tool powered by AI. It allows you to choose if you want to create open or closed captions, and helps you to translate your subtitles to multiple Asian languages. From Hindi, Vietnamese, to Japanese, reach a wider audience with dual language subtitles, reach a wider audience, and improve your watch rate and engagement!

Try out Auris AI for FREE!