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Automate Blog Posts from YouTube Videos: Convert Captions into SEO-Optimised WordPress Posts

Introduction — why turning YouTube videos into blog posts matters

If your business is creating video content on YouTube, you’re sitting on a goldmine of material that can fuel your website, improve SEO and generate leads — without having to reinvent the wheel. This article walks through a practical flow that converts newly uploaded YouTube videos into fully formatted, SEO-friendly WordPress blog posts using captions, simple automation and the WordPress API. The workflow demonstrated in the video shows how to transform caption files into titles, descriptions, tables of contents and article HTML, then upload thumbnails and publish posts — all while keeping a Google Sheets database in sync.

For Australian business owners, marketing directors and CEOs looking to scale content production with limited resources, this approach can cut time-to-publish dramatically and ensure every piece of media also drives organic search traffic. Read on for a step-by-step breakdown, Australian use cases and practical tips to implement this reliably.

Automate Blog Posts from YouTube Videos: Convert Captions into SEO-Optimised WordPress Posts
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Table of Contents

Workflow overview: from YouTube to WordPress

The video demonstrates an automated flow that takes videos uploaded to YouTube and converts them into WordPress blog posts. The main components are:

  • A Google Sheets database that tracks YouTube videos, status fields and the corresponding blog post ID once published.
  • A filter step that identifies videos with a specific privacy status (for example, unlisted) and which have not yet been processed into posts.
  • An AI stage that reads captions and generates an SEO-friendly title, description and article HTML with a table of contents and anchor links.
  • Media handling that uploads a generated thumbnail to WordPress via the REST API and sets metadata like alt text and title.
  • A final publish step that creates the post on WordPress and updates the Sheets database with the new blog post ID.

This flow is particularly useful for teams that record once and publish everywhere — turning recorded webinars, tutorials and interviews into long-form content that improves search visibility.

Prepare your Google Sheets database

Data structure to track videos and posts

Start by building a clear table within Google Sheets that contains the necessary fields to manage the flow. Typical columns include:

  • YouTube ID — unique video identifier.
  • Privacy status — public, unlisted, or private.
  • Captions — SRT or VTT content or a link/reference to the caption file.
  • Thumbnail — filename or base64 data if generated by an automation tool.
  • Blog post ID — empty until the WordPress post is created.
  • Upload status — e.g., pending, published, error.
  • Category — selected from your WordPress site taxonomy.

Keeping this single source of truth makes monitoring easier — your marketing team can review which videos are waiting for conversion and spot errors quickly.

Select unlisted videos and filter criteria

Why target unlisted videos

Many creators upload videos as unlisted when they want to finalise other assets before publishing — such as captions, thumbnails or supporting blog content. Automating the conversion of these unlisted videos means you can complete the web content and schedule both video and blog to go live together.

Practical filtering criteria

The video demonstrates selecting items where privacy status = unlisted, blog post ID is empty, and upload status is persist (or pending). You can extend filters to include:

  • Minimum caption length — ensures there’s enough transcript to create a meaningful article.
  • Specific playlists or tags — to target a campaign or topic cluster.
  • Creation date — limit to recent uploads to avoid reprocessing old content.

Double-check captions and thumbnail

Before generating any textual content, validate that captions exist and that a thumbnail is available or has been generated. The automation flow in the video confirms captions and a “beautiful thumbnail pre-created with chip t” are present. In your setup:

  • Confirm captions are complete and correctly timestamped.
  • If you use auto-generated captions, run a quick quality check especially for industry-specific terminology and names.
  • Ensure your thumbnail matches brand guidelines: aspect ratio, legible text and consistent visual style.

For Australian businesses, verify local references, place names and accents in captions so the generated article uses correct spelling and context.

Generate titles and descriptions from captions

Using AI to convert captions into article elements

Once the captions are validated, the next step is generating the title, description and article content. The automation in the video transfers the YouTube ID and captions to an AI prompt which returns:

  • Article HTML with headings and paragraphs.
  • Suggested category.
  • Created title and meta description.

Key considerations for Australian SEO:

  • Use Australian English spellings (e.g., “optimise”, “organisation”).
  • Include geo-qualifiers when relevant (city, state, suburbs) — e.g., “Melbourne digital marketing tips” — to capture local search intent.
  • Prefer clear, benefit-driven titles that match both the video content and the audience’s search queries.

Automatic table of contents and anchor links

The generated article includes a table of contents and anchor links. This benefits usability and SEO by improving time-on-page and helping Google understand page structure. Ensure that anchors are descriptive and match H2/H3 headings — they should also be unique.

Choose categories from your WordPress blog

Mapping your video to an existing WordPress category keeps content organised and improves taxonomy-based SEO. The process in the video shows selecting categories from the WordPress blog before publishing. For Australian companies:

  • Align categories with your buyer journey — e.g., “Local SEO”, “Product Guides”, “Customer Stories”.
  • Use categories sparingly; prefer tags for micro-topics.
  • Consider creating topic clusters where videos and blog posts reinforce each other around a core service or product.

Prepare media files and upload via the WordPress API

Required fields for WordPress media upload

The WordPress REST API supports uploading media programmatically. The video illustrates building a request with these key fields:

Field Description
attachment file name The filename to store in WordPress (e.g., video-thumbnail-123.jpg)
content type MIME type (e.g., image/jpeg)
binary file data Base64 or multipart file payload
alt text Accessibility description for the image
title Media title stored in the library

When uploading thumbnails for each post, make sure the file name and metadata are meaningful and include keywords where appropriate, but avoid keyword stuffing.

Typical upload flow

  1. Prepare the thumbnail file (generated by a design tool or AI engine).
  2. Construct the REST API request including the proper headers for authentication.
  3. Send the media data to the WordPress media endpoint.
  4. Capture the returned attachment ID and URL to use as the post’s featured image.

Set image alt tags and titles

Alt attributes and image titles are often overlooked but are important for accessibility and image search. The video demonstrates setting the alt tag and title during the upload. Best practice:

  • Keep alt text descriptive and concise — for example: “Small business digital marketing workshop in Sydney”.
  • Include a keyword only if it’s natural and relevant; priority is user context.
  • Set an image title that helps internal editors identify the file, e.g., “thumbnail-video-2025-05-branding”.

Clean the data and publish the post

Before sending the final create post request, the flow performs data cleaning and builds the final query. Cleaning includes:

  • Removing timestamps or caption metadata that shouldn’t appear in prose.
  • Fixing punctuation and spacing issues that come from auto-transcribed captions.
  • Ensuring headings hierarchy is correct (H2 > H3 > H4) and that the table of contents matches.

When creating the WordPress post programmatically:

  • Include the generated title, meta description and article HTML.
  • Assign the category and tags.
  • Attach the featured media by ID.
  • Set the post status to draft or publish depending on your review needs.

For many teams, the ideal pattern is to create the post as a draft, give editors a chance to review and then automate a scheduled publish. Other teams will publish immediately if quality controls are in place.

Update your table and verify the published post

After the post is created, the automation updates the Google Sheets database with the newly created blog post ID. This step closes the loop and prevents the same video being processed twice. The video shows this exact update occurring and then verifies the new post on the site by navigating to the relevant category (for example the AI category).

Recommended verification checklist:

  • Confirm the blog post ID was written back to the sheet.
  • Open the published post to check formatting, images and embedded video.
  • Validate the canonical tags and meta description for search engines.
  • Run a quick accessibility check for alt attributes and heading structure.

Australian business use cases

Here are specific examples of how Australian businesses can use this flow to scale content production.

1. Local accounting and advisory firms

A firm producing a short video on tax changes can automatically create a long-form article explaining the details, with local examples like ATO considerations for small businesses in Brisbane or Melbourne. Add city-specific keywords to rank in local searches.

2. Real estate agencies

Open house walkthrough videos can turn into neighbourhood guides and market commentaries. Include suburb names and market indicators to capture high-intent local traffic.

3. Retailers and e-commerce brands

Product demo videos become detailed product guides, use-case lists and FAQ sections. This helps with product discoverability and reduces post-purchase support queries.

4. Training providers and consultants

Convert recorded webinars and course snippets into blog content that becomes lead magnets, with embedded sign-up forms and links to course pages (hosted on your site).

SEO tips and best practices for automated posts

Automation is powerful, but quality control ensures it helps rather than harms your SEO. Follow these guidelines:

1. Maintain editorial oversight

Set posts to draft for critical topics. Automated text from captions can include filler words, mis-transcriptions and conversational fragments — editing improves clarity and search relevance.

2. Use schemas and structured data where possible

While the basic flow creates article HTML, adding structured data such as Article schema or VideoObject for the embedded YouTube improves rich result chances. If you automate schema insertion, validate regularly.

3. Avoid duplicate content

If you publish the full transcript verbatim, search engines may treat it as thin content. Instead, use the transcript as the source for a polished article that adds unique context, examples and additional resources.

4. Localise and use Australian spellings

Adjust the language model or transformation rules to output Australian English. This helps with relevance for local searchers and aligns with user expectations.

5. Monitor performance and iterate

Track metrics like organic impressions, clicks and dwell time for posts produced by the automation. If certain topics underperform, refine prompts, title formats or add more human editing steps.

Conclusion and next steps

Automating the conversion of YouTube videos into WordPress blog posts can drastically increase the amount of evergreen content on your site while ensuring consistency across channels. The flow shown in the video and outlined here uses a Google Sheets database to manage videos, validates captions and thumbnails, generates titles and article HTML from captions, uploads thumbnails via the WordPress API and publishes posts — updating the tracking table with the new blog post ID.

For Australian businesses, this approach is particularly useful for scaling content across local markets, improving organic visibility and reducing the manual workload on small teams. Start small: automate a single channel or content type, monitor outcomes and then expand the workflow.

Interested in implementing this for your team? Consider a staged rollout: set posts to draft for the first batch, tune prompts and metadata for Australian English and local keywords, and then move to scheduled or immediate publishing when quality is consistent. If you have questions or experiences to share, leave a comment — it’s useful to hear how other Australian businesses are using video-first content strategies.

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