Is it okay to use hiddencontaining meta information that is a video transcript?

[danatanseo]

I have been using the tools at DotSub.com to transcribe our YouTube videos. They are free, work really great and I highly recommend them. Today I received an email from DotSub with recommendations for SEO on video. I have a question about #5 on their list. Here it is:

"Step 5: Embed the video transcript into the non-visible meta-data of the page"

"Always embed the video transcript in the page meta-data This is done by placing
the content of the transcription within a non-visible HTML element (a hidden
div). While most search engines do not weight non-visible content as high as
visible content, this will still provide additional SEO for your page.  Do
this whether you include the full transcript visibly on your page or not."

This is something I have never heard before. And, like many of you, I have always heard that putting anything "hidden" in the HTML is a very bad idea. Is this different? Do any of you do this? Is it really a recommended technique?

Thanks all!

Dana

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Text in hidden divs is indexed and included in SERPs. The content is still on the page just in video form - I don't see a problem with adding the transcript for SE to "read" the video. I would recommend also offering the option to view the transcript via click for visitors - some people may not have access to sound or prefer reading.

Also be sure to use Schema markup for VideoObject - there is an attribute for transcript that you should apply.

[irvingw]

I would not hide text on the site.

a jquery actually shows the text to the user and is spiderable (seo friendly) so i would go that route

http://www.pgi.com/us/en/video/pgitv-home/602045087001/Save-Money-by-Going-Virtual-with-PGi-Easy-to-Use-Web-Conferencing

click "view transcript" link below the video to see

[CMC-SD]

I agree! I really like reading transcripts rather than watching videos, so thinking about the user rather than the search engine, I would suggest putting the transcript in a collapsed div.

[danatanseo]

Thanks Oleg. Yes, I totally agree with you and CMC-SD about some users preferring to read the transcript instead of watching the video. We are already including the full transcript on the page with the video itself.

Given that we are already including the text visible on the page, would you still recommend including it in a hidden div? Or is that unnecessarily redundant?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

That would be redundant. If anything, maybe offer the option to hide the transcript (for people who don't want to read it and it gets in the way). Otherwise, just make sure you mark it up with all the proper mark up.

[irvingw]

and some people are deaf so you are making your site more handicapped friendly as well as getting that good unique content on your page to boost SEO!

[PhilNottingham]

I generally concur with the comments so far - it's definitely a good idea to have the transcript within the HTML, marked up with Schema.org and available for users to see.

Set your <div>  to style="display:none" and then include a button which will trigger the text display in a drop down, tab or Lightbox overlay.

Alternatively, the Jquery route that Irving suggested is just as good.

Whatever the solution you go with, you just need to stick to the principle of allowing the text to be visible and easily accessible to users if it's also going to be visible to the search enginges.

However, if you're already including transcripts flat on the page, then aside from aesthetics, there's no reason to bother hiding the text .

[danatanseo]

Thanks very much Phil. I've gotten so much out of your blog posts and I recommend them to everyone who asks me about video SEO. Yes, flat on the page is working pretty well for us right now. The only times it's impractical is when the video is really long. In those instances we are either including the content via a tab, or even by creating a blog post with the video+transcript (much like what SEOMoz does for WBF videos).

I appreciate you and all the others here responding to this question.