WordPress and Youtube: How To Integrate

It’s estimated that a billion hours of online video are viewed every day. This means the medium is an extremely popular and potentially effective way to communicate with huge numbers of potential customers.

When combined with WordPress, YouTube videos are a low-hassle way to target your site’s visitors. For example, a landing page including a YouTube video could benefit from an increase in User Experience (UX), and more importantly, take advantage of a boost to its share rates. What’s more, you’ll likely experience a higher search engine ranking, as popular engines often prioritize video.

In this post, you will find out how to include YouTube videos on your WordPress website, and we’ll also look at some popular plugins for getting the job done!

Embedding YouTube Videos on WordPress

Embedding a YouTube video in a WordPress page or post is a relatively easy process. First of all, you’ll need to grab the URL of the YouTube video you’d like to embed by clicking the Share button:

In the pop-up, you can either copy the URL that displays, or if you’d like to display your video in an ‘iFrame’, click on Embed, which provides you with the code you’ll need:

Copy the URL or code, log into your WordPress dashboard, and open either a new post or an existing one. From here, select the Text editor, then paste in the code:

Next, switch to the Visual editor, which will display your embedded video:

At this point you can carry out some basic adjustments by clicking the video and selecting the Pencil icon.

WordPress YouTube Plugin

Of course, it will be no surprise that WordPress offers a number of plugins to provide you with advanced options for embedding YouTube videos on your website. Let’s take a look at three examples.

1. YouTube Embed

First, the YouTube Embed plugin is designed to give you more control over the videos you add to your website. It lets you customize the videos you embed, the YouTube channel you add, and also your YouTube Live Stream. It’s a full-featured plugin that is a great option for all manner of site owners.

2. YouTube Gallery

Next up, the YouTube Gallery plugin enables you to display your embedded YouTube videos in either a gallery or a grid, depending on your requirements. It gives you more control over how your videos are displayed, which will be great for media-heavy WordPress sites.

3. Gallery – Video Gallery and Youtube Gallery

Finally, if you’re looking for a way to display your YouTube videos in a unique way, this plugin is worth considering. There are seven stylish views to choose from, and a wealth of customizations to help match your videos to the design and branding of your website.

WordPress YouTube Shortcodes

If you don’t want to add another plugin to your WordPress website, you could also use WordPress shortcodes. In short, they let you to modify and customize specific features and aspects of your embedded YouTube videos. WordPress includes the [embed][/embed] shortcode out of the box.

You’ll likely want to change the video dimensions to better fit your site’s design, although other customizations such as player alignment, whether you hide related videos or the information bar, and changed the appearance of the player itself are all options to consider.

To achieve this, simply wrap your YouTube URL within the [embed] example.com [/embed] shortcode, like so:

[embed width="600" height="400"]http://youtu.be/8QCF1s35Sc8[/embed]

You’ll then see the video displayed within the Visual editor:

Of course, you’ll also want to check that your video looks good on the front end too, and make any changes as necessary until you’re happy with your results.

YouTube Widgets

There are many instances where you’ll want to embed a video in the sidebar, footer, or header of your WordPress website. We can achieve this with widgets.

To do so, navigate to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard. From here, drag the Text widget into the area you want to embed your video. Next, either add the code, URL, or shortcode as we previously outlined, and click Save once you’re done:

After saving your widget, remember to check your front end to make sure the video appears as you expect. You can essentially make the same customizations as you would when embedding a video into your main page’s content.

Video Schema for WordPress

Every website owner and website developer should continually look for ways to rank as highly as possible on search engines. ‘Schema markup’ (also referred to as ‘rich snippets’ or ‘structured data’), is a group of tags that simply tell search engines what a certain piece of site content is about.

Of course, it’s important that your content gets noticed through organic search, and Schema markup makes this possible. What’s more, it can also be applied to your embedded YouTube videos using VideoObject Schema.

When implemented correctly, search engines will display a wealth of information on your video, such as its duration, thumbnail, description, and much more. This could lead to higher Click-Through Rates (CTR), resulting in a boost in traffic. Of course, the more traffic you receive, the greater your conversion rates could be.

In a nutshell, embedding a YouTube video into your WordPress website is easy. In addition, the benefits you’ll receive could see your conversion rate and traffic levels skyrocket. This means it’s essential to have reliable and fast hosting that you can depend on. For the very best in WordPress hosting, check out WP Engine’s range of plans, and contact us to discuss which one is right for you!