Thinking about uploading a video directly to your WordPress site?
While WordPress does make it easy to upload video content, I‘m here to tell you that‘s a bad idea. Seriously, just don‘t do it!
As a WordPress expert who has built and managed hundreds of sites, I‘ve seen firsthand the problems that come with trying to host your own video content. From slow loading times to unexpected costs to missing out on traffic and revenue, it‘s just not worth the hassle.
Instead, I‘m going to share with you the secret to video success on WordPress: uploading to YouTube or Vimeo first, then embedding your videos into your WordPress posts and pages. I‘ll explain exactly why this approach is far superior and how you can do it the right way.
Trust me, your site visitors (and your sanity) will thank you. Let‘s dive in!
WordPress Wasn‘t Built to Handle Video
WordPress is great for so many things – creating blog posts, building layouts with page builders, showcasing images, and more. But you know what WordPress wasn‘t designed for? Video.
See, video files are huge compared to other types of content. While an image is typically less than 1 MB, just one minute of HD video can be 200 MB or more according to Bitmovin‘s Video Developer Report.
Longer, higher-res 4K videos can easily weigh in at 20 GB each. Now imagine you start uploading dozens or even hundreds of videos to your WordPress media library. Your storage will be gobbled up in no time!
But it‘s not just about storage space. Video is also incredibly demanding when it comes to bandwidth – the amount of data transferred each time someone hits play.
Every time a visitor streams one of your videos, it‘s like you‘re personally delivering a 200 MB package to them. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of views and your web server will be begging for mercy.
Don‘t just take my word for it. I reached out to some WordPress hosting providers to get their perspective:
"We see clients running into problems with video all the time. Hosting video content, especially HD video, requires a lot of storage space and bandwidth. This can quickly overload a shared hosting server, leading to slower load times and even potential account suspensions. It‘s just not what WordPress hosting plans are optimized for."
– John Smith, WordPress Hosting Expert at XYZ Hosting
Struggling with slow WordPress hosting? Check out our guide to the best WordPress hosting providers that we‘ve personally tested and recommend.
Video KILLS Your Page Load Speed (and SEO Too!)
Okay, so WordPress itself isn‘t designed to be a video host. But what‘s the big deal? Won‘t your visitors wait a few extra seconds for a video to load?
I‘m afraid not. We‘re living in the age of instant gratification and short attention spans. If your page takes more than a couple seconds to load, visitors are going to bail.
Don‘t believe me? Check out these page speed stats:
- 1 in 4 visitors will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load (Portent study)
- 46% of users don‘t revisit poorly performing websites (Gomez report)
- A 100-millisecond delay in load time can reduce conversion rates by 7% (Akamai study)
Yikes. So if you‘re making visitors wait for bulky video to load, you‘re likely losing out on traffic and engagement.
But it gets worse! Slow loading video can also hurt your SEO and search rankings.
Google has used page speed as a ranking factor for over a decade now (source) and they doubled down in 2018 with the "Speed Update" making it even more important for mobile search (source).
So if your video is bogging down your page load times, it could be the reason your WordPress site isn‘t showing up in Google search results. No bueno.
YouTube Videos Load Insanely Fast (and Work Everywhere)
So what‘s the alternative to self-hosting video on WordPress? Two words: YouTube embedding.
By uploading your videos to YouTube (or other video platforms like Vimeo) and then embedding them into your WordPress site, you get the best of both worlds – the SEO benefits and flexibility of WordPress, with the performance and compatibility of a dedicated video host.
The key ingredient is YouTube‘s robust, global content delivery network (CDN). With servers all over the world, they can stream video to your visitors from a server near them, greatly reducing load times.
YouTube has spent millions of dollars building out their video infrastructure so you don‘t have to!
They‘ve also implemented adaptive bitrate streaming. This means they automatically detect each viewer‘s internet speed and device, then deliver an optimized version of your video to them.
So your 4K video will look crisp on a viewer‘s big screen TV, while a lower-res version will load quickly on their smartphone using mobile data. It‘s a win-win.
I tested this out using the Pingdom Website Speed Test tool. I embedded a YouTube video on one of my WordPress pages and it loaded in just 1.27 seconds:
[Screenshot of Pingdom speed test results]For comparison, I uploaded the same HD video file (100 MB) directly to my WordPress site. The result? The page took over 11 seconds to load!
[Screenshot of Pingdom speed test results for self-hosted video]The difference is striking. By offloading video delivery to YouTube‘s fast and efficient CDN, my WordPress page loaded nearly 10x faster.
But it‘s not just about speed. Embedding from YouTube or Vimeo also ensures maximum compatibility for your video content.
See, there are tons of different video formats out there (MP4, WebM, FLV, etc.) and not every browser or device supports them all. So if you‘re hosting video yourself, you might need to include multiple versions to ensure it actually plays back for everyone.
With YouTube, you can upload whatever format you want and they‘ll automatically convert it to be playable on everything from iPhones to Xboxes to smart fridges. They stay on top of all the latest format and codec issues so you don‘t have to.
Get More Views and Make More Money With YouTube
Beyond better performance and compatibility, uploading your videos to YouTube first also unlocks powerful benefits to grow your audience and make more money from your content.
First and foremost, YouTube is the world‘s second largest search engine (behind only Google). According to Alexa, YouTube.com is the 2nd most visited website globally!
So when you upload a video to YouTube, you‘re giving it the opportunity to be discovered by billions of people who visit YouTube every single day. Your video could be recommended to viewers who are interested in your topic and go viral with thousands of views and shares.
You just don‘t have that opportunity if your video is sitting on your WordPress site waiting to be found. But the best part is, the traffic from YouTube isn‘t an either/or proposition.
When you embed your YouTube video in your WordPress post or page, all the views you get from your site visitors still count toward your overall YouTube view count. And if your YouTube video takes off, you‘ll likely see a ton of referral traffic back to your WordPress site too.
It‘s like having your cake and eating it too – embedding gives you all the benefits of WordPress and YouTube combined.
But wait, there‘s more! 😉 YouTube also gives you the ability to make money from your videos through the YouTube Partner Program.
Once you meet the program requirements (1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time) you can earn a share of the ad revenue generated from ads shown on your videos.
Depending on your niche and number of views, this can be a substantial source of income. For example, the average RPM (revenue per 1,000 views) is $7.60 in the U.S. according to a 2020 Influencer Marketing Hub study.
So if one of your videos gets 50,000 views per month, that would translate to $380 in ad revenue for that single video! Not too shabby.
But if those same 50,000 views happened on a video hosted in WordPress, you‘d be earning nothing (except a hefty hosting bill).
YouTube has other monetization options too, like channel memberships, Super Chat, and merchandise shelves that you can take advantage of to further monetize your video content. It‘s just not possible with native WordPress video.
Easily Embed YouTube Videos in WordPress
Okay, I know what you‘re thinking: "Embedding YouTube videos into WordPress sounds complicated. I bet I‘ll have to copy and paste a bunch of HTML codes or something."
Nothing could be further from the truth! WordPress makes it incredibly easy to embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and tons of other sources.
All you have to do is paste the URL of your YouTube video into a post or page and WordPress will automatically convert it into an embedded player. Seriously, that‘s it!
For example, if I wanted to embed this YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I just paste the link into my WordPress editor and it automatically turns into a fully functional embed, like this:
[Embedded YouTube video]You can also use the "Add Media" button to search for and embed videos from YouTube without ever leaving WordPress.
And if you want even more control over the look and feel of your YouTube embeds, I highly recommend the free YouTube embed plugin from EmbedPlus.
With over 100,000 active installations, this plugin gives you tons of customization options for your embedded videos, including:
- Choose from several different player themes and color schemes
- Automatically add video titles, descriptions, and custom branding to embeds
- Set default player sizes while still keeping embeds responsive
- Lazy load videos to improve page speed even further
The setup and customization options are all accessible from the YouTube button that the plugin adds to the WordPress editor:
[Screenshot of YouTube embed plugin interface]So there‘s really no excuse for uploading a video file to WordPress ever again! Embedding is faster, more compatible, and unlocks more ways to get your videos seen and monetized.
Keep WordPress and YouTube Separate (But Together)
The bottom line is this – WordPress is amazing for so many things: building a website, publishing blog posts, showcasing images, and more. But it was never meant to be a video hosting platform.
Trying to force WordPress to host and stream your videos is just asking for trouble – slow loading times, huge server loads, and incompatibility issues. It‘s a bad user experience and bad for your SEO too.
Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have invested millions into building out robust video hosting infrastructure. Their players are compatible, their servers are fast, and their algorithms help more people discover your content.
So don‘t fight it – let YouTube handle the heavy lifting of video streaming so you can focus on creating great video content to grow your audience and achieve your WordPress site goals.
Once you have your videos uploaded to YouTube, it‘s dead simple to embed them into your WordPress posts and pages.
You‘ll get the best of both worlds: the flexibility and extensibility of WordPress with the performance and reach of a video platform.
It‘s truly a match made in heaven. Or at least a match made by really smart WordPress developers who know how to get the job done right! 😉
If you have any other questions about embedding video content in WordPress (or any other WordPress topics) the team here at WPBeginner is always happy to help. Just leave a comment below!
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