Today, I’m going to share a little-known secret to getting the related video selections removed from videos you upload to YouTube and then embed on your blog or website. In the adventure travel and tourism space (as well as many others), YouTube is a great tool to help demonstrate activities and share real, authentic experiences from participants. In addition to this, YouTube is the number two search engine – second only to its parent company Google. This makes it an invaluable tool and, when properly optimized, helps you get in front of people seeking to do what you offer!
Why do You Want to Remove Related Videos from Embedded Videos?
The answer varies but for, Northern Outdoors, the answer was simple: they were inadvertently serving up competitors’ videos on their website and blog at the end of their own videos. Why? Because the YouTube algorithm works based on related content and tags then pairs up videos of like content. So it’s pretty easy to see why this would happen, but how do we fix it?
Fixing the YouTube Related Videos’ Problem
As long as we’re talking about Northern Outdoors, let’s select one of their fun rafting recap videos done by Zach, one of their experienced multi-year guides. If you watch the entire video, you’ll see that by default it stacks a number of related video selections into the video player at the end. Great for users who are exploring and discovering new content but not so great for the brand that may be featuring this video on their website.
The embed code they were using is the standard when clicking the Share > Embed buttons below the video on the YouTube link. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7leSTH6DXjg) See figure 1 below:
The code you receive from Youtube is:
To prevent the related videos from appearing on your site in the player window, you need to modify the embed code by adding ?rel=0 to the end of the URL in the code. It will now look like this:
Now, after changing the code, and watching the entire video, you’ll see that the only thing left at the end is more of Northern Outdoor’s own videos. Success!
So that’s how to alter the code to remove related videos from your embedded videos! Read our blog on Optimizing Your Youtube Channel for more on getting a higher search position for your videos within YouTube and some tricks from the pros on optimization. Hope this helps you in the future and feel free to contact us with any questions you might have!
