WordPress and Vimeo: How To Integrate

In the next four years, it’s been predicted that over 80% of internet video traffic will be consumer based. To take advantage of this, it’s essential for every customer-focused WordPress website to leverage the power of video—a good start is by embedding relevant videos from video sharing platforms such as Vimeo.

When used together, WordPress and Vimeo are a powerful combination—and it’s relatively easy to embed Vimeo videos into a WordPress page or post. Video will help to improve User Experience (UX), and also has the potential to lead to higher Click-Through Rates (CTRs) and conversions. You could also experience higher share rates, leading to even more exposure and visibility.

In this post, you’ll learn how to embed Vimeo videos to a WordPress website, and how some popular plugins can make this process a whole lot easier!

Embedding Vimeo Videos on WordPress

As we discussed, embedding a Vimeo video into a page or post is simple. To begin, find a Vimeo video you want to embed. We recommend creating a Vimeo account and uploading the video file to minimize the possibility of the video being deleted by the original poster. Once you’re ready, grab its URL by clicking the Share button underneath the player:

You’ll see several options in the pop-up that appears, so copy either the link or the embed code, depending on whether you want to display your video within an iFrame:

When you’re ready, navigate to a post or page in your WordPress dashboard and paste in the code you copied from Vimeo. If you’ve chosen to copy the embed code, you’ll need to paste this into the Text editor before switching to the Visual editor. At this point, you’ll see the new embedded video displayed:

While this is a simple solution, you don’t have much in the way of customization options. For that, you’ll need a suitable plugin to embed video.

WordPress Vimeo Plugins

Given that plugins are inherent to WordPress, it’s inevitable that there would be solutions to help make embedding Vimeo videos easier. Here are three examples we’d recommend you check out to embed a Vimeo video.

1. Vimeography: Vimeo Video Gallery WordPress Plugin

First up is the Vimeography plugin. This lets you quickly create stunning custom Vimeo video galleries, and includes a number of customizations to create a solution that fits your needs. For example, you can set featured videos to play first and change the appearance of your videos’ theme, among other options. What’s more, you can also create an almost unlimited number of Vimeo video galleries.

2. WordPress Vimeo Videos

The next plugin on the list is WordPress Vimeo Videos. With this solution, you can create posts from any imported Vimeo videos quickly and easily. It will use the videos’ metadata (including the title, description, and thumbnail) to populate your post, and there are a myriad of tweaks you can make to the look. For even more options, there’s a premium version available offering features such as automatic bulk importing and priority support.

3. Video Gallery

Finally, we have the Video Gallery plugin from Huge-IT. This is more flexible than the previous options, as it can handle both Vimeo and YouTube videos. It offers seven great-looking layouts for your videos, and you can create an almost limitless number of galleries. What’s more, you can display videos on any WordPress post or page by using the dedicated shortcode.

WordPress Vimeo Shortcodes

While plugins are a great way to add Vimeo videos to WordPress, they’re not your only option. WordPress includes a dedicated shortcode, which enables you to easily change specific attributes, such as the width and height of your Vimeo player. To use this, simply add it to your post or page (in any of the editors) using the following formula:

[embed width="XXX" height="YYY"]URL[/embed]]]

As with adding the Vimeo URL, you’ll see your Vimeo embed display immediately. Finally, make sure you check that your video displays correctly on the front end. If you need to make changes, simply edit the code within the Text editor.

Vimeo Widgets

There may be times when you wish to embed video in other areas of a WordPress website, such as the header, footer, sidebar, and other related content. WordPress widgets are the feature you’re looking for!

To achieve this, go to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard. There are several different widgets types here, and they can all be added to the footer, header, or sidebar of your website.

To display videos, locate the Text widget and drag it into the relevant widget area on the right-hand side:

Add a title, insert the embed code from Vimeo URL, and click Save. Again, check the front end of your website to make sure your addition looks good, and tweak the settings you’ve coded as necessary.

Video Schema for WordPress

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an effective way to generate more online traffic, which can result in more business leads, email subscribers, and paying customers. Schema markup can help you with this. Also known as “structured data” or “rich snippets,” Schema markup is a collection of tags that lets search engines know what certain parts of a website are about.

It’s essential that your website’s content is ‘crawled’ by search engines, and Schema markup helps you to achieve this goal. However, it can even take things one step further by highlighting your Vimeo videos through VideoObject Schema.

If you use VideoObject Schema in the proper way, a huge amount of vital information about your video can be displayed within search engines, including its description, thumbnail, and duration. The benefits will likely be a noticeable increase in traffic, which can affect engagement and conversions positively. As such, it’s worth checking out if you run a media-heavy website.

Of course, although WordPress and Vimeo are easy to combine, sites with a lot of video content will benefit the most from a rock-solid and super speedy host you can rely on. With this in mind, you should seriously consider a dedicated managed WordPress hosting plan from WP Engine, and find out which of our popular WordPress hosting plans is the right one for you!