SEO Practices: A Study about the Way News Websites Allow the Users to Comment on Their News Articles

Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis, Evangelos Lamprou, Matina Kiourexidou and Nikos Antonopoulos
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Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis: School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China
Evangelos Lamprou: Department of Digital Media and Communication, Ionian University, 28100 Kefalonia, Greece
Matina Kiourexidou: Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54 124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Nikos Antonopoulos: Department of Digital Media and Communication, Ionian University, 28100 Kefalonia, Greece

Future Internet, 2019, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: In the current media world, there is a huge debate about the importance of the visibility of a news website in order to secure its existence. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) practices have emerged in the news media systems around the world. This study aimed to expand the current literature about the SEO practices by focusing on examining, via the walkthrough method, the ways that news companies allow the users to comment on their online news articles. The comments on the news websites are related to the notions of social influence, information diffusion, and play an essential role as a SEO practice, for instance, by providing content and engagement. The examined sample was collected by the most visited news websites’ rankings of alexa.com for a global scale and for the countries Greece and Cyprus. The findings reveal that the news websites throughout the globe use similar features and ways to support the comments of the users. In the meantime, though, a high number of the news websites did not allow the users to use their social media accounts in order to comment the provided news articles, or provided multiple comment platforms. This trend goes against the SEO practices. It is believed that this finding is associated with the difficulty of the news organizations to regulate and protect themselves by the users’ comments that promote, in some case harmful rhetoric and polarization.

Keywords: SEO; news websites; Greece; Cyprus; comments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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