Should You Add Your YouTube Videos to Your Blog?

If you have a blog, adding YouTube videos to it might be something to consider for your readers. That way, visitors can either read or watch the content. And there are actually quite a few benefits to including videos within your posts.

The only real downside is how embedding videos can affect the performance of your website. Yet, there are ways to reduce this impact, as I’ll show you in a moment.

4 Benefits of Adding YouTube Videos to Your Blog

If you have both a YouTube channel and a blog, it doesn’t take much effort to embed your videos. In fact, it takes less than a minute and may have a big impact on your channel.

Let’s take a look at several benefits of adding videos to your site’s content.

Marketing Your Channel Outside of YouTube

First, embedding videos from YouTube helps market your channel. This is because not everyone who visits your blog knows your channel even exists. And although not everyone will subscribe, a good portion of them might.

It’s always good to promote your YouTube channel on other platforms. You’ll reach a wider audience while engaging them on their preferred platform. Blogging is just another method of marketing your channel for free.

In reality, a lot of my subscribers for the writing channel came directly from the blog videos.

Improving On-Page Time of the Post

The longer someone spends on your blog posts, the better. By adding video content to complement the text, visitors are more likely to spend time on the site.

I’ve seen this on several blogs, and not just my own. I have a client who has some astronomically high numbers thanks to webinar videos on the blog posts.

In the case of the writing channel, all of the top 10 posts with the highest average time on the page have video content.

Increasing Views and Watch Time

Did you know you can get more views and watch time recorded by YouTube from videos shown on your blog? External sources are part of YouTube’s metrics in the Creator Studio and can show you where people are most likely to see your videos outside of the system.

For the most part, though, the biggest external source is from Google. Still, a blog with good traffic can see some incredible viewership.

Why is this important? Because it can help you reach the 4,000 hours of watch time needed to join the YouTube Partner Program.

Improving Visitor Engagement

All of the above culminates in improving the engagement of your blog’s visitors. And this goes beyond the on-page time for the blog or the watch time for the video.

Visitors are more likely to trust in a creator if they can connect with them on a level beyond text. They’ll be more likely to subscribe to both the blog and the YouTube channel, more likely to make purchases, and can otherwise help you grow both platforms.

How to Add YouTube Videos to the Blog

Adding videos to the blog is relatively straightforward. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, especially if you’re using WordPress.

Although this tutorial is featuring WordPress, it should work the same way regardless of the blogging platform your use. That is as long as you have HTML access or can embed YouTube links within the content.

Step 1: Copy the YouTube Embed Code

Go to any video on YouTube that you want to share on your blog post. This can be any video that has sharing enabled, and it doesn’t have to be one of your own.

However, if you want views and watch time credit for your channel, you’ll want to use something you own.

Click on the “Share” button under the video. This will open a small pop-up window with more options.

Click the “Embed” option. As you can see, you can also quickly share the video across a variety of social platforms, including email links or the Community Tab for your channel.

Click the “Copy” option on the bottom right of the Embed Video pop-up.

Note: You can also change when the video starts on the blog or disable player controls if you wish.

Step 2: Paste the Embed Code into the Blog

Now that you’ve copied the embed code, go to the blog post in which you want to show the video. In this tutorial, I’m using this post in WordPress.

Add a Custom HTML block to the blog editor.

Click into the Custom HTML block and paste the embed code you copied from YouTube.

Step 3: Save or Update Your Post

Basically, you’re done and you can save or update the post. However, if you have a bit of knowledge about HTML, you can customize the embed code a few ways to fit your website.

For example, you can change the height, width, alignment, and more in the iFrame.

In any case, once you’ve added the code and updated your post, you’ll have a video available for your visitors to watch.

Alternatively, Use the Video URL

WordPress, as well as other platforms, has the capacity to embed YouTube videos into blogs just by using the URL of the video itself. However, I find that using the actual embed code is better for my sites simply because they’ll record views and watch time better for some reason.

I spent several hours testing this, and the only videos on my blog that were picked up in YouTube’s analytics were the ones that I used the embed code itself.

I’m sure that it has more to do with the plugins and security I have running in the background. So, try both methods if you’re not seeing your blog as an External Source in YouTube.

Use the WP YouTube Lyte Plugin

One way to avoid YouTube videos from slowing down your blog is by using the WP YouTube Lyte plugin. Essentially, this plugin lazy-loads the videos so your site scores higher on tools like PageSpeed Insights.

Plus, it’ll save a thumbnail in cache so your blog doesn’t have to wait for data from YouTube until the visitor clicks the image.

This, combined with defering JavaScript through Async JavaScript, increased my PageSpeed Insights scores by 50 points! I was actually quite impressed with how well the combination of plugins worked.

Be Careful of Some Firewalls

As I mentioned earlier, some firewalls will prevent YouTube from recording views and watch time form videos on your blog. In my case, it was how Wordfence protects the website.

However, I was able to fix the issue by running Wordfence in “Learning Mode” and playing the videos a few times in the day. Ever since, the views and watch time appeared in the YouTube analytics screen.

Certain aspects of JavaScipt have a tendancy to trigger the firewall. This, in turn, prevents that script from running correctly. It may not break the video outright on your blog, but it will prevent certain elements of that video.

In this case, it’s how YouTube collects data from external sources.

If you find that your YouTube videos are not being recorded in analytics from your blog, start by checking your firewall and security settings.

Blog Traffic is Vital to Success

Keep in mind that blogs that get around 20 visits per day or less might not deliver an amazing experience. Not everyone who reads your blog posts are going to watch the YouTube videos.

The more traffic your blog gets, the more likely you’ll pick up some views and subscribers. And this all revolves around being able to write a blog post people want to read.

When you start gaining an audience on your blog, you’ll see that impact on external viewership.

One thing you should keep in mind is how well YouTube and a blog work together. Out of all the social media outlets I use for the writing channel and blog, more than 80% of the visitors are from YouTube. The next closest is Facebook with roughly 9% of visitors.

That’s because my videos often have links back to my blog.

If done correctly, you can easily build an intricate web of interaction between your channel and the website. It all comes down to connecting with both audiences and engaging them with what they want to consume.

Do You Use YouTube Videos on Your Blog?

While Google will probably be the biggest contributor to external sources, getting a few more views from the blog can help. As I said, I’ve gained a few subscribers from embedding videos in the posts.

It’s just another method you can use to promote the channel and gain some exposure. Especially if you write a few awesome blog posts regarding your topics.

How often do you use blog content as topic ideas for YouTube videos?