– what do you need to know?
The Republic of Albania is a small Balkan country with a population of around 3 million people, located in south-eastern Europe. The country borders Greece, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, having access to two seas: the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea. The capital of Albania, Tirana, is also its largest city.
Albania has one official language, Albanian, and its official monetary unit is the lek, which is divided into 100 quindar. The country has been a candidate for the European Union since 2014. It is a member of many international organisations such as the UN, NATO, WTO and the Council of Europe
73% of Albania’s population has access to the Internet. Among them, 81% use mobile devices to surf the web! With such a high percentage of people using smartphones, it is necessary to optimise your website for mobile-friendliness to gain the trust of Internet users and make it easier for them to browse the content on your website. As for the percentage shares of each device, they are as follows (data for March 2022):
People in Albania are keen to use social media, with the number of social media users reaching almost 65% of the total population (early 2022). As in many other European countries, the channel taking the leading position is Facebook, with 89% of Internet users (data for 2021):
3 million
Albania’s population
73 %
of the population has access to the Internet
2,2 million
Internet users
97 %
of users use Google
In Albania, as in most European countries, Google is the leader, used by more than 97% of all users. With this in mind, our SEO360® strategy for Albania is focused primarily on activities designed for this search engine. It is followed by Bing and Yahoo! (data for March 2022):
When it comes to web browsers, number one in the Albanian online market is Google Chrome, which is used by more than 56% of Internet users. The next top positions are as follows (data for March 2022):
In Albania, the e-commerce market is only just developing, with around 40% of the population having made at least one online purchase in 2020. Albania is still predominantly a cash economy, which is a major factor inhibiting faster e-commerce growth. According to statistics, only 8% of the population have credit cards.
Although e-commerce in the country is still at an early stage of development, there are several popular e-shops in Albania. The TOP3 include the following:
When going deeper into the subject of the e-commerce market in the Republic of Albania, let us have a look at the main categories of products purchased online by Albanians. The following segments can be distinguished:
How do Albanian e-consumers behave? First of all, they pay attention to the price, which has the predominant influence on their purchasing decisions. If they find a special offer that appears attractive, they are willing to use it. Albanian consumers perceive time savings and a wider choice of products as the crucial advantages of online shopping. However, every second Albanian sees online shopping as a complement to shopping in brick and mortar shops, rather than its substitute.
Unfortunately, customer service and sales support in Albania are underdeveloped services. Bear this in mind when deciding to expand your business in this direction and make sure that your online shop provide these services at a high level.
When entering the Albanian market with your online business, choose a local domain suitable for this country. You should go for a website with the “.al” extension.
Interestingly, the national domain of Albania is readily used for domain hacks. Contrary to what you might think, domain hacking has nothing to do with cybercrime. The phenomenon involves using the domain in a creative way. Examples for the “.al” extension are:
If you want to expand your business across Europe, think about using the “.eu” suffix. However, if you would like your business to go global, you should choose one of the most popular international domains, i.e. the “.com” domain.
From a business perspective, the Albanian e-commerce market, which is still in the process of development, appears to be a challenge worth the effort. Why? The small number of competitors means excellent potential to gain a large number of customers, thereby increasing profits and revenue for your business. Stay one step ahead of your competition and get started today!
Link building is one of the core elements of effective SEO activities. If you are thinking about expanding your business into the Albanian online market, it is essential that you have a well thought-out strategy in this area. How should you do it? Below, you can find some precious tips:
Take care to acquire high quality links.
An extremely important factor in link acquisition is to ensure high link quality. For a link to be valuable, it must come from a highly valued website.
Remember about link diversification.
Acquiring links leading to our website from various sources is an absolute must-have if you want to be better recognised by Google’s algorithms. The most popular methods of acquiring links include: sponsored articles, mentions on social media and buzz marketing, and posts on Internet forums.
Thematic publication sites.
In your link building strategy, try to choose places to publish your articles that correspond to the subject matter of the content on your website. By doing so, you will increase your chances of attracting potential e-consumers (who visit online industry portals of interest while surfing the web) to buy your product.
The most comprehensive service
SEO360® ensures the most comprehensive service among other similar on the market, such as SEO or SXO, which has been confirmed by research.
Guaranteed sales increase
The service provides a guarantee of the final effect, an increase traffic and revenue / leads.
Hybrid settlements based on success fee
Once 100% of the original target is achieved, any results above are based on a success fee.
Guaranteed link maintenance
We do not remove acquired links even after the end of cooperation.
We work all over Europe
Under one contract, we can carry out our work for all European countries with the support of a network of quality partners.
Individual strategy
We prepare a comprehensive, extensive strategy in which we examine the real needs of consumers (customer insights) before starting any actions.
SEO360®
regular SEO
Strategy
It is the starting point for SEO360® actions, individually priced and created on the basis of the customer’s needs and expectations included earlier in the brief filled in by the customer. As part of our conceptual work, we establish the KPIs necessary for successful implementation of further stages of the project, in particular analysis, content marketing plan and estimations, which are the components of the strategy.
Analysis
In this step, we carry out all the activities verifying the current state of the selected website in terms of SEO and its potential in a given country when compared to the competition. At the same time, we analyse the full user path based on the customer journey. The result of the analysis is a large amount of data that can be used to implement further SEO360® steps.
Content Marketing Plan
Individually prepared for the industry represented by the Client and for the given markets where SEO360® activities will be conducted. It includes a scenario concerning the type of created content and the way of its distribution in order to reach the consumers with it precisely and to be one step ahead of the competition. Content Creators guarantee the successful implementation of this plan.
Estimations
An extremely valuable and final component of the strategy, where we estimate individual values related to the visibility of the website in the most popular search engine of a given country, taking into account the increase in traffic and, more importantly, the increase in conversions over a specified period of time.
Technical SEO
When starting proper SEO activities, one of the necessary steps to achieve final success is technical SEO, also called technical analysis or technical optimisation for SEO, i.e. the part of optimisation that does not concern content. It consists of all activities that affect the architecture and code of a website in such a way as to make it as friendly as possible to the most stringent search engine requirements and, at the same time, to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Content optimisation
Part of optimising a website for SEO, in addition to technical SEO, is content optimisation. Valuable content for the user is one of the key elements that will help to achieve high search engine visibility as well as increase conversions and thus revenue.
UX + CRO
As part of the SEO360® service, we provide analysis and optimisation of User Experience metrics with a particular focus on heuristic experiments and A/B testing as well as Conversion Rate Optimisation. In this way, we analyse consumer activity at each stage of their purchase process, increasing sales effectiveness.
Link Building
We conduct link building using the highest quality permanent links acquired from external sources or services, from reliable publishers with a guarantee of their maintenance even after the end of cooperation. As part of this process, we take care of the correct link profile, which brings end benefits.
Ongoing Data Analysis
In SEO360®, through advanced tools supervised by the Client Success Manager, we constantly measure the progress related to the evaluation of conducted activities, and on their basis, our customers have access to extensive reports 24/7.
Increase in traffic and revenue
The ultimate value of SEO360® is the increase in brand awareness, traffic, conversions and revenue generated from the service, which is significantly higher than in the case of ‘regular SEO’ and above all, it is long-lasting.
Data source:
Let’s stay in touch
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office@seogroup.pl
If you decide to position your website in Albania, you need to make sure that your website and strategy are optimised for the most popular search engine in Albania, which is Google. Another important issue is to design your website in the right language. If you want to get to the top of the Albanian search engines, make sure that the content of your website is in the local language (grammatically and linguistically correct and of high quality).