I was auditing a client’s WordPress site last week—a beautifully designed setup using a medical theme—and I noticed something strange. Their blog traffic was solid, but their “Time on Page” was abysmal. People were finding the site via Google, scanning the H2 headers, and bouncing in under 45 seconds.
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We didn’t fix this by writing better text. We fixed it by embedding a 60-second video summary at the top of the post.
For years, the debate in the WordPress community has been binary: Text vs. Video. Writers swear by the SEO power of the written word. Marketers scream that “video is king.”
Here is my take: If you are picking a side in 2026, you are already losing. The winning strategy isn’t substitution; it’s integration. And the best part? You no longer need a camera crew to pull it off.
The Case for Text: The SEO Backbone
Let’s not kid ourselves—text isn’t going anywhere. Search engines (despite their recent AI overhauls) still feast on structured text.
When you build a site using clean, semantic HTML—like the structure you get with AWP Life’s MediHealth or Formula themes—you are feeding Google exactly what it wants. Text provides the depth, the keywords, and the crawlability that puts you on page one.
If you abandon text for a video-only feed, you lose your search footprint. Text is your discovery engine. But text is terrible at emotion.
The Case for Video: The Trust Engine
While text gets them to the door, video invites them in for coffee.
A visitor might skim a 2,000-word article on “Web Design Trends,” but they will watch a 30-second clip showing those trends in motion. Video builds trust faster than any “About Us” page ever could. It reduces bounce rates (a key ranking signal) and keeps users glued to your layout.
The problem? Most WordPress users are terrified of video. We think it requires expensive gear, lighting kits, and hours of editing in Premiere Pro.
That used to be true. It isn’t anymore.
The “Hybrid” Workflow: Working Smarter, Not Harder
This is where the tech scene has shifted massively in the last six months. You can now run a “Hybrid” strategy—high-quality text for SEO, high-engagement video for retention—without hiring a production team.
1. Repurposing Articles
You have already done the hard work of writing the blog post. Don’t let that effort die as static text.
I’ve started using an AI Video Generator to automatically turn my blog outlines into explainer videos. You feed the tool your article URL or script, and it builds a narrated video with stock footage and subtitles. You paste that video embed right after your first paragraph. Suddenly, your readers have a choice: read or watch. Most do both.
2. Animating Portfolios
This is specifically huge for users of the Portfolio Filter Gallery plugin. Static grids are fine, but motion stops the scroll.
If you are a photographer or designer showcasing work, you can use Image to Video AI tools to breathe life into those static shots. Imagine taking a still image of an interior design project and adding a subtle camera pan or zoom effect, then exporting it as a loop.
Replacing a few static thumbnails with these “living photos” makes your portfolio look significantly more premium. It turns a standard gallery into a visual story.
Technical Reality Check: Don’t Break Your Site
A quick warning before you go crazy with video: Do not upload video files directly to your WordPress Media Library.
I see this mistake constantly. Hosting MP4s on your own server eats up your bandwidth and ruins your page load speed (Core Web Vitals). It doesn’t matter how light the theme code is; a 50MB video file will kill your performance.
The correct workflow:
- Generate your video assets.
- Upload them to a dedicated host (YouTube for reach, Vimeo for control, or an AWS S3 bucket).
- Use the WordPress Embed block or a specialized video gallery plugin to display them.
The Bottom Line
The internet is becoming “multimodal.” Your visitors expect to read a little, watch a little, and interact a little.
If you are running a business site or a blog on WordPress, look at your top 5 most popular text articles. Ask yourself: How hard would it be to add a 30-second visual summary to these?
With the tools available now, the answer is usually “about 15 minutes.”
Have you guys tried mixing video into your blog posts yet, or are you still 100% text?
