How Transcripts Are Edited and How Extensive Edits Should Be
Have you wondered why we make transcripts of podcast episodes, and how much we should tweak them? And what’s the purpose of transcripts anyway?
Transcripts boost your SEO, helping your website appear on search engines like Google. When we create transcripts, we’re taking your podcast episodes and turning them into text, giving your website a massive word count boost which helps with your search engine rankings.
Transcripts aren’t always grammatically perfect because podcast hosts and guests don’t speak in complete sentences throughout the conversation. And that’s okay. The main goal is to give your SEO a long-term leg up. Too much tweaking might change what was actually said, and we don’t want that. So, we keep the editing to a minimum, focusing mainly on getting the names and company names right, and leaving the natural flow of conversation intact.
1. Understand the purpose of transcripts
Transcripts are used mainly for SEO purposes, significantly boosting the word count of a blog post and improving its visibility in search engine rankings. The Rise25 team uses both software and human effort to create transcripts, ensuring accuracy, particularly with proper names and company names.
2. Reflect on user interaction with transcripts
Over many years of creating transcripts, our team at Rise25 has found that although people may review or read transcripts, hardly anyone requests changes. Most importantly, we have not seen an increase in ROI by focusing on improving the grammar or sentence structure in the transcripts. Remember that people often do not speak in complete sentences during podcasts, so the transcripts may not always be grammatically perfect.
3. Resist the temptation to overedit
Avoid spending additional time and resources on perfecting transcripts. Keep in mind that the goal of transcripts is to aid in long-term SEO rather than serving as a flawless written record of the podcast episode. Too much editing can inadvertently alter the original meaning and context of the conversation, defeating the transcript’s purpose.
