Hello friends,

As you know YouTube is a powerful social network that can increase your website traffic and brand awareness (if used properly). That is why it is always a good idea to consider creating your own channel and start uploading videos related to your business. These may be presentations, tutorials, reviews, etc. You should keep in mind that this channel and each of the videos, that you are going to create and upload, need to be branded appropriately with texts that contain relevant keywords and phrases. This will help for SEO as well. Also you should bear in mind that you have to follow YouTube rules when uploading video content, so make sure that you get familiar with the requirements.

So if you are really considering starting your own channel you need to be familiar with the ways of integrating your content with your website. That is why in this post I will present to you various ways of embedding YouTube videos in WordPress.

You can also find this post useful if you just want to embed content created by others to your personal blog or website.

Why do I need a guide on embedding YouTube videos in WordPress? Isn’t this supported out of the box?

You are right! WordPress does support out of the box embedding of YouTube videos (and videos from other websites). By default all you need to do is just paste the link of the video and voila – it will be added to your post or page without any problems.

However there are some cases that require a different approach than the default one. You may want to place a video at a special location on your website with special formatting. And these are the tips and tricks that you are going to find in this post.

OK – What other ways of embedding YouTube videos do exist?

The next popular method is related to the embed code that you can get from YouTube for each video. Simply right click on one and select the option to copy the embed code. Then paste it in the desired location on your WordPress website.

By default this code may look like this:

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="YOUTUBE VIDEO URL" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

You will be able to change the width and height values in this iframe. A suitable location for it may be a text widget.

Another way of embedding a YouTube video in WordPress is by using the “embed” shortcode. You can find more information about it in the WordPress Codex (click to read). This method is suitable when you want to add videos as part of your sentences. By default this is not possible as any additional text that wraps the oEmbed code will be considered as part of it and you will encounter an error. But the “embed” shortcode fixes this issue. Here is how to use this method (replace the …… with the video url and ** with [ at the beginning and respectively ] at the end for both “embed” and “/embed”) :

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit -**embed**……**/embed**. Sed semper urna et enim pulvinar faucibus.

This will add the video as part of the first sentence (as you can see the dot is placed after the embed structure).

Another method is by using Jetpack. Simply install and activate this plugin and then go to the admin panel. Select Jetpack – Settings and activate Shortcode embeds. This will allow you to easily manipulate the width and height of the video. Here is an example (again replace ** with [ at the beginning and ] at the end of the url):

**YouTube URL**&w=800&h=600

And you should be able to receive an embedded YouTube video with the desired dimensions.

Any other methods that I may find suitable for embedding YouTube videos in WordPress? Some plugins maybe?

If you thought that there are no plugins for this purpose – you thought wrong. There are various great solutions that you may use. Here are some of them:

Page Builders

Most (if not all) page building solutions for WordPress provide ways of embedding YouTube videos. You can easily set up different options (not only related to size but to similar videos, autoplay, etc). What is most important is that this method will allow you to place the video where you want exactly the way you want it. Without any coding, of course. Check our selection of great page builders from here.

YouTube Embed

This plugin will provide various options embedding YouTube videos in WordPress.  Download it from here.

Lazy Load for Videos

Lazy loading is essential for faster website. Especially if you have many embedded YouTube videos on one place. This WordPress plugin is a great solution for YouTube and Vimeo embeds as well. Get it from here.

WP Video Lightbox

If you want to embed YouTube, Vimeo and other videos in a stylish lightbox then this is the WordPress plugin for you! Grab it from here. You can also read our review for this great plugin.

That’s all friends! Share your thoughts and questions on these methods in the comment section below. I hope that you are going to find them useful.

See you soon!