Maximizing user experience on your blog can be quite important if you’re trying to develop a strong subscriber base. Return visitors could wind up being your bread-and-butter if you have the right tools and add-ons available. Video marketing based on YouTube has created a lot of traffic for a great deal of blogs and websites. It’s an inexpensive and easy to use system that can create a flow of traffic back to your blog.

Creating videos surrounding your blogs niche isn’t difficult to accomplish. If your videos are informative and relevant to your website, it can have lasting effects in regards to traffic generation. Not to mention that adding videos of your own, or someone else’s, to your blog can make for additional entertainment for your visitors and have On-Page SEO benefits.

But how do you actually display YouTube videos in your posts and why should you bother?  Well we guide you through the whole process.

Add YouTube Videos To Your Website

1. Embed Code

Whether the YouTube video is your own or on another channel, there is an option in the video to “Share.” Inside this sharing list is the option to “Embed” the video. This will give you the coding you need to add it to your website or blog in HTML. As various options are available, you can resize and somewhat customize the code to fit your needs. YouTube also includes a Custom Size option that will constraint the proportions of width and height in order to fit your needs perfectly. With this code, you copy and paste it into your WordPress post.

When you sign into WordPress and create a new post, you have options on the right of the content area for “Visual” and “Text.” The “Text” area is where you can add the embed code in HTML format. Of course, you may want to make sure that the video is small enough to fit into your post without overlapping the side bars of your blog.

2. Adjusting the Code

When you copy the code into your blog, it could look a bit messy. The video is there, but the text doesn’t block next to it. Instead, the sentence starts at the bottom of the video and wastes the available space. Adding align=”left” inside the code after object width=”640″ height=”360″ will make sure that your content is on the right side of the video matching in an easy to read format. It’s the same align technique used to move images from left, right, or centre.

3. Add Content

Simply adding the video isn’t going to generate traffic to your blog’s page. Now, you need to add some relevant content about the video in the post. This can be a short 300 to 400 word synopsis of what the video is, or perhaps you are using the video as a visual aid to the content you already have (like I have done). Depending on the video and style of your blog, this visual aid could be far superior to adding images.

Adding additional text is key!  A video may well convey everything that you wanted to say, but search engines will not be able to identify what your video is about, after all they don’t watch the video itself.  Writing a post based around the video or, as some sites do (like the SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday) you could transcribe the videos, all helps to show what your video is about.

4. Links in Your Descriptions

If you are the one producing the videos, make sure you include a link back to your blog in the description of the video on YouTube. These links are used far more often than many may realize and are important to generate traffic back to your blog. If your videos become viral, those links could generate more traffic than a Google search result!

If on the other hand you include someone else’s video, why not post a comment on their YouTube channel thanking them for their helpful video and telling them that you used it in a post.  Include a link and you get another source of potential traffic to your site. The vast majority of people will appreciate you using their videos, as they get more exposure and it is seen by more people.

The Benefit Of Adding Videos To Your Posts

Well the obvious benefit of adding videos to your posts is that people can watch them.  In the vast majority of cases, people much prefer to watch something that simply read it.  Videos allow you to explain something in much more detail than simply describing something (though as we have said using both is beneficial).

SEO is another big factor in why you should use videos.  Whilst search engines can’t tell exactly what your videos are about, they do look favourably on sites/posts that use other forms on media (images, videos, audio, etc.).   That’s why you should think about making your posts more visually appealing by engaging your readers more.  People are much more likely to stay on your site when there are helpful pictures and useful videos, as well as quality written information.

Although some may scoff at the idea of adding YouTube content to his or her blog posts, many have accumulated a great deal of traffic from the backlinks in video descriptions. Adding video, whether your own or someone else’s,  only enhances the experience for the blog visitor. You never know, your blog’s empire could include a popular YouTube channel that generates its own income on top of traffic back to your website.