So far, videos have become one of the most efficient tools to attract, engage, and bring back visitors to your website. Today, anyone who wants to start a blogging website, a business website, or an eCommerce website with WordPress, like to embed videos in WordPress. Videos help to spread their message more effectively and help to advertise their products.
Being such an effective interaction tool, it’s now been used by over 86% of global marketers, according to recent statistics by Wyzowl. Besides improving your website’s user experience, embedding video content can help any website rank better on the search results page.
So, once you’ve finally decided to embed videos in WordPress website, the next question you’ll probably ask will be how to do that quickly and with maximum performance.
So, in this article, we’ll introduce the basic methods of embedding videos in WordPress posts and pages with ease and minimum effort.
Let’s get that started!

Basic Video Embedding Methods for WordPress
No matter whether you’re going to embed videos in WordPress which may be into a food blog or eCommerce website, there are many options for this content implementation. So, to help you define the most convenient option, below we’ll introduce the most popular ones, explaining the specifics of each.
1. Embedding Videos in WordPress via the oEmbed Protocol
oEmbed is a protocol that enables implementing videos, images, text, and other content by entering the source URL for the media you wish to embed. That is why it can be applied to nearly any source platform, where your video was originally shared and doesn’t require any specific coding knowledge at all.
As a result, you’ll have a seamlessly implemented video that looks really professional-like and is organically inbuilt into the page’s structure.
2. Embedding Videos in WordPress via the Iframe Code
The Iframe method is more functional compared to the first option, as it allows you to customize how your video will show up on your post or page. Therefore, by slightly modifying the code, you can set up the time for starting the play and pause, including the player controls such as play/pause, volume, the fast-forward button, and more.
Once you’ve finalized the Iframe code, it can be then inserted directly into WordPress by pasting the embed code into the text mode of the target CMS. In this way, you can easily embed videos in WordPress with IFrame.
3. Adding Videos in WordPress by Using a Sidebar
If you’re searching for a way to add videos to a sidebar instead of inserting them in your post, then try the direct video widget embedding using its source URL.
WordPress supports the auto-embeds for over 20 platforms, including Vimeo, Flickr, Hulu, DailyMotion, Instagram, Reddit, Spotify, SoundCloud, TED, Tumblr, and many others.
However, this option is not available for YouTube video embedding. So, if you need to embed YouTube videos, here’s a quick guide on how to insert the video blocks in just a few clicks:
- Log in to the WP admin dashboard, go to Appearance > Customize and find “Widgets”
- Choose the most preferable option for the sidebar and click the “Add a Widget” button
- Find the “video” widget category, click on “Insert from URL” and paste the source URL from YouTube into the box
- Check the preview and click the “Add to Widget” button to confirm
- Enter the title of your video widget (if needed) and hit the “Save & Publish” button to embed the changes.
Now you’re all set!
4. Embedding Videos in WordPress Through the Video Embedding Plugins
Last but not least efficient method to embed videos in WordPress websites is by using various plugins that add advanced functionality. Apart from simple video embedding, you also get the chance to make use of the extra customization options, making your video more responsive and functional regardless of the device they’re being played on.
Additionally, video embedding plugins for WordPress provide more options for optimization of the video titles, descriptions, and metadata, which can also help with SEO. Some additional functions you can typically get with that method include video autoplay, mute, loop, and related video suggestions (where supported) and many other useful options.
But you need to be aware while using the plugins. This might affect the security of your WordPress website. Some plugins might contain malicious codes that will affect your site’s performance.
Embed Videos vs Uploading to the Hosting Account: What’s Better?
While it’s more efficient to embed videos, most website owners still tend to upload videos directly to the site’s hosting account. But is it actually worth it? Actually, direct video uploading is not as effective as video embedding, and here’s why:
- It takes more server resources. Uploading your videos can significantly affect your website’s performance, which directly results in poor UX and increases the bounce rates significantly.
- It drives less traffic, visibility, and shares. Unlike it is with direct video uploading, if you embed the videos from popular video platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, you’re unlocking more traffic channels for the website. Additionally, video embedding allows easier content management and better visibility of your brand or business, which is surely a great advantage to make use of.
- It minimizes brand recognition. Being solely shared on the website, your video content will be only browsed by the website visitors. But, if posted on platforms with powerful traffic flow, your videos are more likely to target larger audiences, thus increasing their awareness of your brand or business.
Finally, embedding your videos won’t take that much time and effort to complete, which makes it an excellent option regardless of the industry and content used! Already completed the video editing stage and are ready to embed the finalized material on your website? Don’t lose the chance to maximize the efficiency of your video content today!
What Types of Videos Are Best for Embedding?
Once you’ve discovered why you should embed videos to your website instead of their direct upload, the next question comes out: what type of content should you start with? Of course, everything primarily depends on the topic of your website and the target development strategy, but we’d like to also share some nice ideas to try for video embedding:
- Relevant vlogging content
- Sharing useful videos from other sources like youtube
- Tutorials and how-to guides
- Products or Service reviews like Elementor Cloud
- WordPress Hosting QA videos
Simply unleash your creativity and start developing powerful content for your site’s posts and pages!
Wrapping Up
Without any doubt, videos can significantly enrich your content and add more value to your website regardless of its scope. Although you can upload your videos directly to the website, embedding those with the specific tools is much more preferable and helpful for the site’s performance as well as security.
Now that you’ve learned the best practices to embed videos in WordPress website, why not give it a try? Find your best video embedding option and put this knowledge into practice right away!
Frequently Asked Questions
Videos are one of the most efficient and powerful tools for marketing and keeping the viewers engaged. Adding videos to the website help you to communicate with your customer in an effective way. The reasons for using videos on the website are:
- Improve you rank on google search engine pages
- Create impact in the market providing better website experience, thus standing out from the competitors
- Highlight your products, brands and company personality.
Embedding over uploading is strongly advised because uploading the videos slows down the site’s performance and might also impact your SEO in a negative way.
The advantages of embedding over uploading the videos include:
- Save Bandwidth and storage
- Easy sharing
- Compatible with web browsers
- Video quality optimization
- Less traffic and visibility
Mostly, for video embedding, YouTube serves the best. It is not only the biggest hosting platform but also the second most popular search engine and second most popular social networking platform after Facebook.
Yes, auto embedding is possible in the WordPress because of its feature named ‘auto-embeds’ which allows your website to automatically get the embed codes from popular hosting platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and few more. All you need to do is put the video link in the WordPress editor and WordPress will do the embedding for you.
You can change the alignment, aspect ratio, video width and also add caption to the video through this feature.
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