Adding videos to your site is a great way to add valuable content to your site to keep visitors interested, informed and engaged for longer. There are two ways to add video content “Uploading” and “Embedding”. In this article, we will go through the difference and show you step by step how to add video to your WordPress site.
Table of contents:
- Upload or Embed?
- Advantages of Embedding video?
- Which service should I use to host and embed my video
- Conclusion
Upload or Embed?
There are two ways to add video to your WordPress site. You can either use the WordPress media library to upload a video file directly to your WordPress installation and serve the video from your site or you can upload your video to a third-party video sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo and embed the video in your site.
When you upload a video the video will take up space on your hosting account and will use your hosting plan bandwidth resources every time the video is seen and downloaded. Even relatively short videos can be quite large in size and with relatively few page visits may quickly exhaust bandwidth allowances.
When you embed a video the video is hosted outside of your site and doesn’t count towards your hosting plans disk space or bandwidth use. The video is streamed from a third party streaming service which has many other advantages
Advantages of embedding video
There are many advantages to embedding videos rather than uploading them.
The first is that it will save you hosting resources as video is the primary reason we see people going over their disk and bandwidth quotas. Beyond that having your video’s available on public streaming sites makes them much easier to share and faster to deliver.
If you are looking to increase your Search ranking then adding video to Streaming sites such as YouTube and Vimeo are a great tool in your SEO strategy.
Importantly embedding video will give your end-users a better experience on your site. The streaming services allow users to choose the video quality for the internet connections or can even detect the users’ connection and auto-optimize for them. They will also allow users to stream the video content so it starts immediately instead of downloading the entire video before playing which can cause delays and increase your bounce rate.
Some other advantages include
- Your video will be searchable on a third party such as YouTube increasing awareness of your site.
- Increased analytics available on some platforms
- Automatic caption services
- Earn money from advertising revenue with your videos
This is why we recommend embedding videos in your WordPress site.
Which service should I use to Embed my video?
There are a number of great options for you to consider when selecting who to host your video with. All of them will do a great job of hosting your video however some have particular strengths that you might find appealing. Here are the best options for you to consider.
- YouTube Huge existing audience make YouTube a great choice to share and promote your video beyond your website
- Vimeo Great video optimisation and collaboration tools make Vimeo a great choice for creating and sharing video
- JetPack The JetPack plugin provides for an unbranded, add free Video solution. A great option for those who already use JetPack.
- Wistia is great for marketing videos with tools that allow you to collect Email and user information from within the video player
- Brightcove An Enterprise level video option with advanced marketing automation that allows you to use your own ads.
- Spotlightr Enterprise level features aimed at Small and Medium sized business with a free tier with great features.
Conclusion
Video content is becoming more popular and more important to engage visitors on your site. We strongly recommend using the Embed technique in WordPress to display video content. To learn how easy it is to do here is an easy to follow guide
