Pain points of cultural institutions in search visibility: the case of Serbia

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the common issues affecting the cultural institutions’ websites in terms of organic search visibility and to detect if there are some category specifics for the national libraries, archives and museums. Design/methodology/approach In the first phase, an online survey was conducted involving the cultural institutions of national importance, aiming to map the current state of their websites in organizational and functional terms, to collect the information about the used domains, their social media activity and the use of analytical tools to monitor the visitor behavior and online traffic. In the second phase, the cultural institutions’ websites were analyzed using the “White Hat SEO” technics of optimization on Google. Findings From the category perspective, the historical archives have the best Technical search engine optimization (SEO) position due to the low coding errors and fair site speed, the libraries are leading in content generation and the museums have a very good total SEO index due to their strong social media activities. Common issues are detected in the description of web images, non-existence of sitemaps and low website mobile friendliness. Research limitations/implications The data were collected from the personnel of the national cultural institutions based on their pre-assumed knowledge and understanding of website management. Practical implications The research methodology can be used to analyze the organic visibility of any national culture on search engines. Originality/value A research gap in addressing the cultural institutions’ websites from the search engine perspective was identified and addressed within the paper.