Making Video News Visible: Identifying the Optimization Strategies of the Cybermedia on YouTube Using Web Metrics

The main objective of this study is to identify the main SEO strategies implemented by the cybermedia's YouTube channels using a battery of web metrics at the channel and video levels. To this end, a sample comprising the ten cybermedia channels in Spain with the highest web traffic is considered. At the channel level, a significant positive correlation is found between connectivity (number of subscribers), productivity (number of videos published), and audience (number of views). At the video level, the correlation between the most viewed videos of each cybermedia reveals the presence of two families of video-level metrics: on the one hand, those related to the impact of videos (Views, Popularity, Likes, etc.) and, on the other, those related to the implementation of active SEO strategies (primarily, tags and keywords within Description fields). Results seem to confirm that SEO strategies are likely to be more effective when applied to videos that are not high quality publications or which do not address popular subject matters, characteristics that tend to attract most viewers regardless of SEO strategies employed. Finally, a set of best practices for promoting and optimizing videos on YouTube, especially tailored for the cybermedia, is proposed.