How to use YouTube to enhance your WordPress strategy
Everybody watches YouTube videos. The platform has over 2 billion active monthly users, and over 75% of Americans aged 15 and older are on YouTube, making it the second most popular site in the world.
The potential to capture a slice of this enormous market is an excellent reason to embed YouTube videos on your WordPress site. However, you are unlikely to succeed if you add videos to your site without a game plan.
Once you’ve found a quality web host and set up your WordPress site, here are some tips on utilizing the power of YouTube to enhance your WordPress strategy.
Embed YouTube videos in WordPress
WordPress makes it incredibly easy to embed YouTube videos. You can then capture views and shares from people who visit your website but do not want to go to YouTube. If you post regularly and share new videos in prominent positions on your site, it can be a great strategy to grow your site’s organic reach.
Besides bringing visitors to your website, embedding your videos could help you grow your small business too. It can help boost user engagement, conversion rates, and even SEO. Once you start seeing more sales, you should open a business account with features and integrations such as accounting trackers and invoice generators to manage income received from customers and clients.
Still not sure how to embed YouTube videos in WordPress pages? It is much easier than you think:
- Copy the URL of your YouTube video from the address bar of your web browser.
- Open the WordPress blog editor and paste the URL on a new line. Remember not to hyperlink it.
- WordPress and YouTube will handle the rest once you hit submit.
If you want to get your hands dirty, you can get the embed code for a video from YouTube. Find and click the “Share” button underneath the video, select “embed,” and copy the code. Paste the embed code into your WordPress HTML editor window, and you’re all set.
You could also try installing a WordPress plugin to simplify sharing videos from your pages. It may encourage visitors to post your content across their social media pages, giving you more exposure and access to potential new customers.
Disable display of related videos
Embedding a video playlist of content from your YouTube channel on your WordPress site is an excellent way to build organic reach and retain your customer’s loyalty. However, it can work against you if your website directs viewers to other channels. Related videos appear as recommendations at the end of your embedded video based on a visitor’s YouTube history.
Unfortunately, the recommendations will often direct viewers to content from other publishers.
Thankfully, some plugins make it very simple to disable the display of related videos on your website by YouTube, with Embed Plus for YouTube doing a great job. Embed Plus is a powerful but lightweight plugin offering you all kinds of video functionality for your WordPress site.
Here’s how to disable related videos:
- First, log in to your WordPress administrator dashboard and open the plugins page. Install the Embed Plus plugin and activate it.
- After successful installation and activation, select YouTube Free from the left-hand side menu to open the plugin settings page.
- Here, you will find related videos as a setting on the “Default” tab. Scroll down the tab and check the box marked “Hide related videos at the end of playback.”
- Click the Save button to complete the setup process.
Use your YouTube thumbnail as a featured image
When your page, post, or another document on your WordPress site includes a YouTube video, the Featured Image from YouTube plugin lets you fetch the preview image or thumbnail of the video and use it as your featured mast image.
If your post contains multiple embedded videos, you can pick one to use as a featured image. The plugin supports a range of resolutions, from Max Resolution for themes that feature large mast images to smaller thumbnails, ideal for your post listings.
The captured featured image is an excellent way to improve the look of blog posts in listings that use a featured image, either as a larger image or thumbnail.
Suppose you create many WordPress posts that contain embedded YouTube videos. In that case, the plugin is a valuable time saver compared to downloading the image preview and adding it to your page or designing an alternative featured image.
Allow users to embed YouTube videos in WordPress comments
Are you looking for a way to liven up your WordPress comments section and boost engagement with your visitors? One of the best ways is to let your visitors insert media, including YouTube videos, into the post comments section.
Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t natively allow visitors to upload YouTube links, social content, videos, and other media files in their comments. However, there is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that uses oEmbed to allow users to leave media-rich content as part of their comments quickly.
The DCO Comment Attachment plugin allows your website visitors to quickly embed YouTube videos, links, slides, and many other services without messing with ugly, complicated code.
To allow your visitors to add YouTube videos in their comments using the DCO Comment Attachment plugin, follow the simple steps below:
- Install the DCO Comment Attachment and activate the plugin by logging in to the admin section of your website.
- After activating the plugin, head to the WordPress admin panel’s “Settings” section and click on DCO Comment Attachment to set up your custom comments settings. The plugin lets you specify different parameters for links and attachments that you allow visitors to include in their comments on your web pages.
- Save the settings and try pasting a YouTube link to embed a video to one of your page comments sections.
Watch your audience grow
Once you create a new website or migrate your existing online presence to WordPress, you need to get people to visit. Apply the strategy outlined here to use your YouTube presence to grow your site’s visitor numbers and engagement through embedded videos.
It can take time to get the numbers you need, but with persistence and a well-thought-out game plan, YouTube can be an integral part of your WordPress website’s growth strategy.
