Recently we received the following question from a client and wanted to take the time to respond: “I have videos on my YouTube channel. How do I take the steps to incorporate them on my site and are they important?”

Why to Embed Videos

Your YouTube videos are more valuable to your law firm than you could imagine. Today, more people are turning to the Internet to find legal representation that fits their needs. Videos are an excellent way to reflect who you are as a firm and help build deeper personal client relationships. Additionally, videos have shown to increase viewer awareness by 52%.

However, knowing which videos to post where can be a tricky business. You only have a few seconds to capture the viewers’ attention and precious time to keep it. A 2013 AdWord study showed that viewers watched only about three quarters of video material provided. You should keep videos short, ideally 60 seconds or less. For more information on what kinds of videos you should post to individual pages on your site, check out this article on how to use videos to better client relationships.

How to Embed Videos

So how can you get those attention grabbing videos from your YouTube channel to your website? The process is actually easier than it seems. Follow these ten steps:

1. On YouTube, open the video you want to embed on your website.
2. Click the “Share” tab to the right just below the video.
3. Since you want to embed the video onto your site, click the “Embed” option.
4. Decide what size you want the video to be. You can set a custom size, or choose one of the standard sizes provided by YouTube.
5. Make sure the box beside “Show suggested videos when the video finishes” is not selected. Doing this means that after your video is finished playing, viewers will not be given the option to see related videos. Given the choice to view other videos, even more of your videos, could distract viewers from the goal you are trying to accomplish.
6. Click anywhere in the HTML field, or the text box with provided code, select all the text and copy it.
7. Open your website dashboard.
8. From here, you want to create a new post. (If you are using WordPress, find “Posts” on the left hand side of the screen and choose “Add New”.)
9. Paste the HTML code into the text area. (If you are using WordPress, make sure you paste the code into the “text” screen and not the visual screen, as shown below. Pasting into the visual screen will display the code rather than the video.)
10. Add a title to your post and a transcript or summary of your video’s content, then publish!

There you have it! Your YouTube video is now directly available to users on your site. Your YouTube videos are prime features for your firm’s site, but only if they are seen.