Have you ever visited a blog and seen it peppered with YouTube videos? Well, there’s a reason for that.
Embedding functional YouTube videos is not only simple, but can be a critical tool for building authority, increasing your brand’s digital presence, and improving user experience.
Let’s take a closer look at how YouTube videos tie into your blogs and why you should start using them in your content creation strategy.
But First, Why Does YouTube Matter?
Before we dive into why you should use YouTube videos in your blogs, let’s take a second to talk about why YouTube matters in the first place.
For one thing, YouTube has about 2.1 billion active users each month. That’s a huge amount of potential customers and traffic to your website.
Additionally, YouTube is the second most visited website, meaning that tons of people are clicking on content on the site.
When businesses position themselves on YouTube, they open themselves up to the possibility of reaching huge amounts of traffic and tapping into new markets.
Now, with that in mind, let’s examine why using YouTube videos in your blogs is so important.
Why You Should Use YouTube Videos on Your Blog
During the blog creation process, there are a lot of different content and SEO strategies you can use to grow your blog. And, as you’ve probably guessed from the title of this post, embedding YouTube videos is one of them.
But, why is that the case?
Well, as it happens, there are a number of reasons why using Youtube videos is so important. Let’s take a closer lok at a few of them.
Expand Your Target Audience
For one thing, including YouTube videos allows you to grow your target audience. You see, YouTube is an international platform, which means that it connects you to customers around the world as opposed to just in your local area.
When you link your blogs with YouTube videos, you create a new way for users to arrive at your post. This can ultimately open you up to more customers and give you a bigger audience.
Improve SEO
Probably the biggest reason why businesses include YouTube videos in their blogs is to improve SEO.
You see, just like blog posts, YouTube videos are optimized pieces of content that focus on keywords. Additionally, YouTube is a platform that’s owned and operated by Google, meaning that the Google SERPs are intricately linked with YouTube.
When you include YouTube videos in your posts, you not only increase your keyword reach, but increase the likelihood that your post appears in search results. Since Google is more likely to show posts promoting YouTube (it’s other platform), your post suddenly becomes more likely to appear.
A blog that has embedded videos is more likely to be picked up by search results than one that doesn’t.
Improve User Experience
A good chunk of the Google algorithm has to do with creating a positive user experience. Google tries to show results that will genuinely benefit readers and which are user friendly.
YouTube videos are extremely user friendly partly because the inclusion of a video will complement the content, providing a more robust article. This gives the user much more information on the subject they want to learn about.
Additionally, YouTube videos help break up long blocks of text. This can make your posts easier on the eye and much easier for users to read. As a result, they’re less likely to jump off the page and are more likely to stay on your site for longer periods of time.
Ways to Use YouTube Videos on Your Blog
Okay, so you know why using YouTube videos is so important. But, how do you go about it?
There are two key ways to use YouTube videos in your posts: by embedding third-party videos and by embedding your own videos.
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
1. Embed Third-Party Videos
Including videos that already exist on the web in publications is one of the most used content marketing strategies.
You don’t even need the video you copy to be exactly about the topic you are talking about. In fact, ideally, it should be complementary to your publication and should explain in detail something specific that you mention in your text. A good example of this is a tutorial relating to part of your post.
In addition to making it more enjoyable, this makes your post much more valuable to your page visitors.
What you must keep in mind, just like when you insert an external link in your blog, you must make sure that the video you are including is not a competitor of your brand or you will be putting a potential client in the hands of the competition.
And, make sure that the video you select doesn’t include affiliate links. If it does, your potential clients could click on those links instead of your own.
2. Embed Your Own Videos
Another strategy is to embed your own YouTube videos into your posts. This works particularly well if you have a channel that’s complementary to the topics you cover on your blog.
By embedding your YouTube videos, you can not only increase your channel’s traffic, but also increase your blog’s traffic. Users are more likely to move from one platform to the other when you use this strategy.
However, you have to be careful. When you embed your own videos you still need to make sure that they’re valuable, informational, and relevant to your content.
How to Embed YouTube Videos on Your Blog
Okay, so you know that embedding YouTube videos in your blogs is important. But, how do you do that? Well, the process is quite simple.
First, you’ll need to select a YouTube video that’s relevant to your post and which you want to include. Then, you’ll need to copy the video’s embed code.
To copy the code of the video you want to insert, you need to go to the platform as if you were going to play it. Locate the share option at the bottom of the video,
A box will automatically appear with some application options. Choose the first option that says incorporate. Then the video will appear for you accompanied by a link, which you must copy and insert into your blog.
Pro tip: YouTube lets you select the size of the video when you insert it into your blog. If you want to prevent your blogs from becoming heavy and slowing down your site speed, choose a smaller video size.
Take Advantage of YouTube Videos to Grow Your Blog
YouTube videos are a major part of improving your company’s blog. Regardless of whether you choose to include third-party videos or your own videos, they can be a key tool to creating a stronger and better digital presence.
What’s more, you can take advantage of YouTube’s relationship with Google to strengthen your position in general SERPs. From there, you can begin to improve your online positioning and put your competitors behind you.
If you’re interested in using YouTube videos to generate traffic for your blog, contact CJ Content Co. We’ll help you develop a game-changing digital strategy that enables you to successfully grow your business.