Using Speech to Text for Accessibility and SEO
Automatic transcription is often thought of as a convenience feature, but it does double duty: it makes content more accessible to more people, and it gives search engines something to actually index, audio and video content are otherwise invisible to text-based search.
Accessibility Benefits
A written transcript makes audio and video content usable for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people in sound-sensitive environments (public transit, offices), and people who simply process written text faster than spoken audio. Transcripts are also the foundation for closed captions, which Speech to Text with timestamps can help produce.
Why Transcripts Help SEO
Search engines can't "listen" to a podcast or video the way a person can, they rely on surrounding text. A full transcript published alongside audio or video content gives search engines the actual words spoken, which can help that content surface for relevant searches it would otherwise never rank for.
Practical Places to Add a Transcript
- Podcast episode pages, publish the full transcript below the audio player.
- YouTube video descriptions, a summarized or full transcript alongside the video.
- Webinar recordings, turn a recorded webinar into a written resource page.
- Internal meeting notes, searchable records of what was discussed and decided.
Getting Timestamps Right
For captioning specifically, enable timestamp levels when transcribing so each line of text lines up with when it was actually spoken, this is what allows a transcript to become a proper caption file rather than just a wall of text.
Get Started
Upload an audio file or paste a direct URL, choose the spoken language, and get a transcript back in moments. Full walkthrough here: Speech to Text guide.