# A Country Risk Assessment from the Perspective of Cybersecurity in Local Entities
## 2 Materials and Methods
### Methods
#### 2.2.4 Obtaining Technical Metrics on SEO  
To model the SEO web ranking performance of online services and how these are presented in search engines, a number of technical metrics were identified:  
* SEO1: The optimization of the service when using a desktop or laptop device;
* SEO2: The optimization of the service when using mobile devices, including tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks, and wearables;
* SEO4: The number of cookies that the online service requires the end user to accept. This metric gauges the user experience and perception of privacy in relation to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [46];
* SEO5_Bing: The number of results displayed by the Microsoft Bing search engine in response to a query about the public entity;
* SEO6_Google: The number of results displayed by the Google search engine after a query about the public entity;
* SEO7_links: The number of web links displayed on the main domain page of the monitored entity.  
In addition to the metrics included in the _CIORank_ framework, the following were incorporated:  
* SEO3_accessibility: The service has been optimized in accordance with the accessibility criteria set out in the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) [47];
* SEO3_best_practices: The service has been optimized in accordance with the standards of good web programming practices, which encompass HTML, CSS and JavaScript code.
* SEO3_performance: This metric concerns the optimization of the service from the moment a request is made until the end user receives the complete content that has been requested. This metric is employed in order to ascertain the quality of the user experience.
* SEO3_pwa: The service has been optimized to become a progressive application. This type of application has the capability to be executed on any platform, operating system, or device that is web-based, which facilitates portability and simplifies the management of push notifications and operations that are performed offline.
* SEO3_seo: The service has been optimized in order to improve its ranking in web search engines.  
The choice of SEO metrics was based on their ability to assess the visibility and accessibility of the service in search engines, as well as the associated user experience. Optimization for both mobile and desktop devices (SEO1 and SEO2) ensures the accessibility of the content to all users, and the evaluation of cookies (SEO4) is concerned with the perception of privacy. In addition, metrics such as SEO3_accessibility and SEO3_performance are crucial for evaluating the user experience and ensuring compliance with established standards, thereby reinforcing a positive perception of the service.  
In this context, defined by eleven technical metrics, an approximate weight of 9.1% was assigned to each metric and normalized so that the result summed to 100%. As was the case in the previous domains, the Discussion Section will set forth the rationale for this proposed weighting scheme.  
All security, availability and SEO web ranking metrics were collected by distinct robots or bots (see Figure 1). These entities crawled the information pertinent to the monitored entities. Such metrics were designated as 'technological variables' on the grounds that they depend exclusively on the technical parameters inherent to the systems under observation.  
From a pure cybersecurity perspective, it is also important to obtain certain availability and SEO metrics, as they can play a role in detecting potential risks due to misconfigurations of exposed systems.