Everyone and their mom know that YouTube is the largest online video-sharing platform in the world. Two billion monthly users; the second-most visited website globally; more than a billion hours of watch-time every day; and so much more.

But that’s nothing new. YouTube has been dominating the video-sharing industry for over a decade now. But the past few years have brought some other factors to the fore; factors such as increasing awareness about video SEO, accessibility, and user engagement.

As a result, content creators have been busy adapting to this changing landscape of YouTube. For such creators, YouTube’s auto-generated captions were a boon initially.

However, YouTube’s auto-captions became notorious for their inaccuracies soon after. So much so that many creators started transcribing their videos to avoid becoming a laughingstock.

But is accuracy the only reason you should opt for creating captions for your videos?

Certainly not! Here are some other reasons you need to stop using YouTube’s auto-captions for your videos:

Closed Captions on YouTube and Video SEO

Similar to how search engines like Google rank your website before showing it on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), YouTube does something similar for your videos.

Seeing how YouTube is the second largest search engine, you will miss out if you do not optimize your videos to rank higher on YouTube’s SERPs.

“But where do custom captions come into this picture?” you might ask!

You see, YouTube’s auto-generated captions do not get indexed by any search engine. Because of this, videos with YouTube’s captions do not help in leveraging any of the benefits that come with ranking higher on SERPs.

As such, if you want your videos to receive more views, more shares, and more traffic in general, you should invest in adding custom captions to your videos.

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Here is how you can integrate your YouTube account with your Wavel account to automatically add custom captions to your videos.

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Closed Captions on YouTube and Accessibility

In the end, the primary function of captions is to enhance the viewer experience. This viewer base includes those who do not speak the video’s language and the deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) individuals.

But with the inaccuracies that YouTube’s auto-generated captions bring to the table, your audience might only use them for a good laugh rather than for making sense of the video.

As for those people who need captions to make sense of your videos, you might end up alienating them altogether instead of enriching their experience.

Conclusion

There was a time that you could grow your YouTube channel by creating quality content. While that remains to be the case, there are many other factors at play. Captioning your videos can address some of these factors.

But by taking the easy way out through YouTube’s auto-generated captions, you run the risk of sabotaging your videos instead of improving their engagement and SEO ranking.

As such, accurately captioned videos are essential for a higher rank in SERPs and a large, inclusive audience.

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