The biggest supporter of the government in Turkish media Sabah has been using public websites in Turkey to increase its online engagement, reported Turkish website Veryansın TV.

Websites of various public bodies including at least four ministries and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) have been used to backlink to the pro-government newspaper Sabah’s website, Veryansın TV found.

Backlinking is the practice of linking to a website from outside sources. Under abusive uses, it can be used to artificially inflate the reach and relevance of a given website to achieve higher rankings and better search engine optimization (SEO) results, which directly translates to more visitors, and usually more monetary gain, for the backlinked entity.

The more sources link to a given website, the higher it will place in web searches, driving further traffic.

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