Title: Analysing private universities' websites in Egypt using search engine optimisation tools

Authors: Rehaballah Elbadrawy; Hend Abd El Halim

Addresses: Business Information System Department, College of Management and Technology (CMT), Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) University, Alexandria, Egypt ' Business Information System Department, College of Management and Technology (CMT), Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) University, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract: Today, the interest in private universities in Egypt and the competition among them is increasing due to the ever-growing youth population that cannot be fully accommodated by the Egyptian public universities. This led many students to enrol in private universities to pursue their university education. Retrieving information about universities, faculties, departments, admission requirements, and tuition fees is vital for both parents and students. One of the frequently used methods that enable websites to be reached faster is search engine optimisation (SEO). The objective of this research is to investigate the SEO level analysis of 19 websites of private universities in Egypt using four SEO automated tools. Then, the average score of SEO tools is taken to give the final ranking of the universities' websites. The final rank was compared with global and Egyptian rank of websites using Alexa and SimilarWeb tools. The websites' traffic sources were examined.

Keywords: search engine optimisation; SEO; websites SEO tools; website source traffic; website evaluation; private universities; higher education; HE; Egypt.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2022.126130

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2022 Vol.41 No.2, pp.224 - 235

Received: 30 Nov 2019
Accepted: 20 Jan 2020
Published online: 13 Oct 2022 *

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