Video may have killed the radio star, but it’s breathing new life into businesses new and old in the digital world. More than ever before, it’s vital that your website includes videos to deliver the most engaging product possible for your visitors.
Fortunately, you do not need to have all of the skills of a professional video expert, computer programmer and experienced editor to be able to achieve this goal. There are many apps and platforms available (maybe even too many) that make it simple to create compelling, original video, including overlays and effects that can be hosted on your website and shared through social media platforms.
Any brand is capable of creating and hosting video on site. So we’re going to run through the reasons why and how to embed video in WordPress to reach a wider, more engaged audience.
The benefits of choosing to embed video from YouTube
Using the option to embed YouTube video on your WordPress post or page gives you the chance to gain enormous benefits, including the ability to embed new content that your users will love and want to see regularly. It’s always worth putting in the time to ensure you’re including video material in your marketing strategy, and with a little bit of hard work at the start, you’ll reel in plenty of opportunities for the long-run.
A few reasons you should add video in website content include:
1. Deliver your message quickly: We live in an era where people want to be able to consume information quickly. Most audiences no longer have the time or energy to wade through pages of text to understand brands or products. Because of this, your brand needs to cater to this shift in demand and behaviour. By choosing to embed the video at the top of your post or page allows you to quickly and easily deliver that message, also giving your content more depth and credibility. It’s also a great way to decrease bounce rates on a page or post and keep your audience on the URL longer.
2. It is SEO gold: Google loves fresh content uploaded to a WordPress website. When you add the URL of the video as an embed, it means you’re uploading content easily and quickly, as well as backing your SEO efforts for better search rankings. Just make sure any text you use is unique, substantial and not thin (Google doesn’t like short text).
3. It gives you personality: Establishing your brand personality through written words and images can be a difficult process, but video allows you to instantly show your audience who you are and what you care about, all through a page or post on your WordPress website. You can be as serious or as fun as you like; you can be entertaining, informative, inclusive, engaging – all in snippets of just 30 seconds.
4. It allows you to stand out: Does your competition have fresh, custom videos being published regularly on their site and through their social media? This instantly gives you a point of difference and if they are already doing it, you can improve on the process and deliver better content that will engage your audience.
5. YouTube in website content engages: The thing about first impressions is that you only get one chance to make one. When people visit your website for the first time you want them to be entertained and engaged so they feel value and a connection to your brand and the best way to achieve that is through video content on your WordPress site.
6. Greater trust and transparency: When you make a custom video, you are ultimately inviting your potential customers behind the curtain to meet the real people of your brand, the real processes behind your product and/or services and a humanised look at how you operate.
7. Widen your reach: When you add new video material, you’re choosing to utilise a highly sharable commodity which makes them social media gold. Your WordPress can gain more organic traction through your social media channels with fresh, embed code that you add to a post or page, which translates into more traffic, reach and greater visibility.
8. More leads: An embed code for a video URL provides entertainment and value, allowing you to get more repeat visitors to your website. In turn, you’ll collect more leads that are of higher quality and better positioned to become conversions.
FAQs
What is a video embed code?
You do not need to be a high-level computer coder to be able to put a video on your website. Most of the popular video housing platforms like YouTube will generate this embed code for you.
An embed code lets you put a video on your WordPress through a snippet of HTML provided by a certain platform. You simply copy and paste this into your WordPress post or page to directly host the content within your website.
What are the types of video files I can embed on my website?
Fortunately, you can upload almost any kind of video file and host it on your website as your video hosting platform will do the hard work for you including codecs etc to ensure that the videos play correctly.
That means you can record in .AVI (Windows Media Video), .3GP (smartphones), .WMV (windows), .MOV (Apple and Mac), .MP4 (iPod/PSP), .MPEG, .FLV (Adobe Flash), .MKV (h.264) or any other format depending on the device that is doing the recording.
YouTube and other leading video hosting platforms will be able to process all of these popular video files. WordPress will automatically play this content to your audience.
It is advised that you stick to MP4 or MPEG-4 as your WordPress embed video option. This is because it’s the longest-standing format, which makes it the most reliable. You’re unlikely to have any issues as a result.
You should be fine with all other formats of video, but you can always use an online conversion tool to change them to MP4 if you want peace of mind and total reliability.
How to embed video in WordPress
This process is extremely simple for WordPress and all other content management systems out there as well – it’s as simple as copying over a link for the video.
There are many ways you can embed videos onWordPress, but we will only be outlining the two most simple to add them to a post, page or other URL. The first is through the WordPress Classic Editor.
If you are using WordPress fresh out of the box, this is the editor you will be using and it is also the default option that many businesses stick with.
All you need to do is click on the visual tab for your WordPress, and you will be able to paste the video URL to your content from wherever it is housed. We advise in all instances to host your videos on YouTube because it is reliable and also because Google loves YouTube content and will favour it in searches.
If you are using the WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg), then you will be familiar with working with blocks of content and this makes it even more simple to add content to your post or page – no matter the URL.
All you have to do is select the YouTube block and add the URL to embed videos to WordPress, and it will be automatically be added to that post or page.
There are other ways you can add video, including adding the embed video code to any URL on your website and you can take a deeper dive into that if you want to learn more. But these two basic methods will enable any business using YouTube and WordPress to do so efficiently.
Adding an embed code for video on WordPress
As we mentioned previously, you are going to need a place to host a video that you want to embed. This means you can then put the video on your WordPress. YouTube is head and shoulders the best platform to do this. If you’re looking to embed videos, it’s also the most simple process to follow.
You can house large volumes of embed videos here and it will talk directly with your website and social media platforms for instant conversions so you can easily share your content with your audience. But the real advantage with YouTube is that this now provides you with another source of traffic that is independent of your URL or website. People will actively search YouTube for all manner of material and if they are looking for your product and/or services then they will easily be able to find you as well.
Is there another reason to use a YouTube video on your WordPress?
Further to this, if your video content is really good and is engaging a lot of people, you are going to get YouTube subscriptions as a bonus. Achieve enough of these and suddenly YouTube will begin to pay you for your content and you’ll gain an additional revenue stream. The more successful your videos are, the more potential you have to earn.
Choosing to embed videos onto your WordPress from YouTube is an extremely simple process; they are not going to watermark your content and you gain instant credibility by hosting on their platform so it really is a win-win process.
Can I add videos to a post or blog article?
Yes, you can add video embed codes into your articles, and you probably should. But there a few things to take note of first before you start to embed videos all over the place on your WordPress.
Firstly, you should let people know there is video content on your WordPress post or article because many people will actively seek that form of content out. If you are writing a blog on your latest product, include that in your header with wording like ‘Take a video tour of our new XX’ or ‘VIDEO: _____’. This can encourage click-throughs to your WordPress site.
Placement of your video as an embed is also important, you don’t want to embed the video and let it get lost in the wash. Ideally, you want this video to be embedded on your WordPress to be positioned above the gold on the page; it can even take the place of the feature image. Anything below the fold is going to be lost and the number of people viewing it will plummet.
It is also important to remember why you are posting these blogs and articles and all of those reasons still stand. Do not just fill a blog or article solely with an embed of multiple videos. Include rich written content as well for your SEO, especially for people to learn more from and to provide context for the video you are presenting.
There are many plugins available for WordPress to enhance your building capabilities and Visual Editor is one of them that can help you improve your website experience with video content.
It has many features, the most important one being ease of use. This provides drag and drop templates so you can easily add video where ever you like on your WordPress, without needing to worry about entering embed coding or manually putting YouTube links in.
These templates also include your landing pages, where people will come when they are ready to purchase. Through the same process, you can drag and drop the specific product and/or services videos will which go a long way towards conversions.
And speaking of conversions, Visual Editor can also help you weave all of these calls to action elements on to your pages and landing pages along with your video to make it easy for customers to simply click to purchase, view testimonials and much more.
If you are looking for a way to enhance the look and feel of your WordPress, but you do not possess strong development or programming skills, this will help you greatly and also allow you to do more with your video content.
If I add a video to my WordPress, will my site slow down?
A slow WordPress site provides poor user experience and can also lead to your site being ranked lower in Google searches, so keeping this speed at a user-friendly level is important – for both desktop and mobile visitors.
Traditionally, video content has been regarded as rather heavy files and having too many on your computer will clog up your hard drive and slow down your computer. So will having too many videos on your website slow down the experience for your visitors?
The short answer is no; because the videos are being housed at a hosting site like YouTube and they have also been compressed so that they look good but will not stall or buffer while the user is watching them. But – and there is a but – there is still potential for any video to slow down your website.
If you are choosing to self-host, then you are uploading the video directly to your website and these files can begin to weigh your website down. It is always best to host them away from your site rather than uploading them directly.
There are pros and cons to each, but for most users hosting your videos on a platform like YouTube makes sense because it is totally free, has the potential to be monetised and will not slow down your site. Self-hosting a video should only be done when you want to have complete control over the video, something that most businesses and most websites do not require.
Hosting your video on YouTube provides more benefits and more opportunities. If you’re not sure how to get started, our WordPress experts are always more than happy to help you land more success through quality video content.
