The impact and culture of search engine optimization strategies within smaller news organizations

Abstract

Search engine optimization, the practice of curating word choice to rank higher on search engine result pages, has been a major innovation in digital journalism, as many media outlets have migrated onto primarily online platforms for news dissemination (Giomelakis & Veglis, 2015). Newsroom SEO practices have the potential to increase organic traffic and digital visibility, allowing for smaller newsrooms to attract a larger online audience, but the value of the practice is unclear when generated content is geographically localized (Giomelakis, 2023). The purpose of this study is to explore how the innovation of SEO strategies are impacting smaller newsrooms in terms of their editorial processes, their content creation and their digital production techniques. Thirteen semi-structured interviews with professionals identified from various smaller newsrooms across Missouri via purposive sampling were conducted. The findings indicate that SEO practices have diffused to smaller newsrooms, but have had a limited impact due to constraints such as time and resources. The findings indicate that SEO is largely considered a powerful tool, but ultimately was not conducive to the environment or goals of many smaller newsrooms. Participants all agreed that their primary audience was local, but diverged on SEO's potential on affecting that local audience. The observations may serve as a guideline for future research on smaller newsrooms' relationship with SEO and further, the value of scale-based innovations for small local publications.