How to embed a video into a blog post

Do you want to embed videos in your WordPress blog posts? Videos bring life to your website, and they are a great way to increase user engagement.

WordPress makes it super easy to embed videos from video hosting sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and many others into your blog posts to add more context to your article and keep people on your website longer.

Why should we embed videos into our blog posts?

Adding videos to a blog post is a great way to capture your visitor’s attention and boost engagement and conversions.

Videos help to increase the time your users spend on your website, and some visitors may even prefer to watch a video than reading written text.

Here's an example of how we embed videos in our own blog posts here at Stepps.

Can't we just upload videos directly to our website?

Well, you can, but we don’t recommend you do so. Videos can take up a lot of server resources. If your video gets a lot of traffic, then your website is more likely to crash.

Secondly, you are missing out on traffic from YouTube users and other video hosting sites.

YouTube is not only the biggest video hosting site, but it is also the world’s second most popular search engine and the second most popular social network right after Facebook.

If you don’t want to upload your videos to YouTube, then you can host your videos on other platforms like Vimeo, Wistia, and more.

How to embed a video into a blog post

Firstly, you'll need to copy the 'embed code' from your chosen platform: 

YouTube: 

Vimeo:

Instagram:

Facebook:

The final step is to simply paste your embed code into your blog post via your website dashboard > Posts > Add New > Text tab: 

Important: Ensure you have pasted the embed code into your post editor via the "Text" tab (as shown above). Once you've pasted your video embed code into your blog article, simply click back to the "Visual" tab to finish adding your blog post, a summary of the video or a transcription underneath your embedded video.

Can we embed videos that don't belong to us?

Yes, this might be useful if you'd like to add a video to one of your blog posts to add more context to your story.

But there are rules you'll need to follow to ensure you are not infringing on someone's copyright material.

The Rules for YouTube

Lots of YouTube videos are ones you can use on your website or blog. In 2011, YouTube started letting people post their videos with Creative Commons licenses. 

YouTube currently has just two primary copyright types:

1. Conventional copyright, in which the creator has full rights. The standard YouTube license is restrictive. You must get permission from the creator to post it or use it in any way.
2. Creative Commons CC BY copyright provides a standard way for content creators to grant someone else permission to use their work with attribution (giving them due credit). These videos are available for posting on your website or blog, even if it's a commercial one. CC BY is the most permissive CC license.

The easiest way to find Creative Commons–licensed YouTube videos is through the Creative Commons Search Tool. Licensing information on YouTube videos can be very hard to find, so we are assuming that videos you find from the Creative Commons Search Tool are in fact OK to repost.

Click on the "Share" icon and then the "Embed" icon to get the embed code for putting the video on your website or blog. The YouTube embed code will automatically include an attribution link back to the source that will show up beneath the video.

The Rules for Vimeo

Vimeo is another major video-sharing website. It attracts more than 100 million unique visitors per month and hosts more than a million videos. It was originally founded as a place for film artists to share and promote their work, so it encourages quality commenting.

Vimeo has a section for Creative Commons–copyrighted videos. It has videos in all six Creative Commons licenses types. Here's how to find Vimeo videos you can post.

1. Sign up for a free basic Vimeo membership account.
2. Go to the Vimeo Creative Commons section.
3. Click on the browse button beneath one of the six license headings (such as Attribution, Attribution Share Alike, and so on).
4. Click on the magnifying glass icon in the upper right of the screen to search that entire section.
5. Find a download button beneath the video.

The Creative Commons licensing requires that you provide a link back to the original Vimeo video if you want to repost it. Vimeo also says in its legal FAQs: "It's always a good idea to contact the video maker if you want to use a video."

The Rules for Instagram

If Instagram videos are public, you can repost them on your website or blog as long as you use Instagram's embed codes.

Creators fully own the content they post on Instagram. However, the Instagram Privacy Policy says: "User Content that you make public is searchable by other Users and subject to use under our Instagram API."