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Essentially, your transcription is the record of what you're talking about for accessibility first, then bots. Keyword stuffing in them is just tacky. But you should definitely pay attention to optimize your title, description, and all that other jazz.

You can add a transcript without times in the interface by using the "transcription" option. It possible that these are less friendly SEO wise. But they are better than nothing. Closed caption files are the best option to go with. (I will admit to be very lazy with my own video and not creating closed caption files, just transcripts. But there are also services that you can pay to do this for you!)

Make sure you're on the waiting list!

It depends what kind of curation you want to do with how Google will treat it.

Are you creating a link list? Are you showing a quick blurb with your opinion? Are you re-publishing the article?

For the first two, you're creating somewhat original content, and I wouldn't worry too much. (Though make sure to add your opinion on the second option.) On the third one, you can use rel=canonical to get around duplicate content.

Google considers links from guest posts as "natural" link building, not "unnatural" (read: buying links) and won't count it against you. In fact, by using the rel=author tag and having your profile appear on other sites, not only will your post likely see higher click-through rates, but you're establishing yourself as an trusted authority on the subject and Google's actually more likely to trust your posts.

Hi Nicola,

Thanks for being active in our Q&A, but please remember that members come from all walks of internet marketing and some are just starting out. (We all once where there.) Part of the reason we have Q&A is to help out and be generous with our knowledge, among other TAGFEE tenants, even when the answer or ways to find the answer seem obvious to us.

Have a great weekend