On any country level, there are so many news sites covering so many topics and interests thinking that it will ideally to gather large audience because of high number of articles produced. If it is the case, search pages will be occupied by unqualified news pieces. To compete well, legitimate news sites need to pay attention to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as one way to outrank qualified news sites.
Indonesia is also undergoing digital transformation where print news sites are experiencing slowing growth while online news media are enjoying good percentage of growth, where room for growth will continue as Indonesia is continuing to build IT infrastructure to cover whole country digitally. While common understanding within SEO community is to get a website ranked in search results is having any back link from news sites because of their perceived high authority, then here comes the reverse approach with SEO to elevate the news site.