SEO in Romania
– what do you need to know?
Romania is an extremely diverse country in terms of culture, customs, scenery and architecture. It is located in southeastern Europe and borders the Black Sea. The country’s largest city and capital is Bucharest, sometimes called “the Paris of the East”. Apart from the capital’s unique architecture, Romania is globally famous for numerous legends about count Dracula, a vampire aristocrat. Romania joined the EU in 2007, which greatly contributed to the country’s subsequent development.
The current population of the country is approx. 19.5 million people. 73.7% of the Romanian population has access to the Internet. While browsing the web, Romanians tend to favour mobile devices – as much as 77% of registered traffic occurs through them. The detailed device breakdown is as follows:
- Phones (77.19%),
- Computers (19.72%),
- Tablets (2.81%).
Facebook is the dominant social media platform in Romania, as it controls over 96% of the local market. The general social media breakdown is as follows (as of April, 2022 data):
- Facebook (96.23%),
- Instagram (1.21%),
- YouTube (0.95%),
- Pinterest (0.87%),
- Twitter (0.51%),
- Reddit (0.13%).
19,5 million
Romania’s population
73,7 %
of the population enjoys internet access
14,2 million
internet users
97 %
of users use Google
Search engines in Romania
To position your website on the Romanian market, you must understand the data related to search engine popularity there: Google is the most popular search engine in Romania, as over 97% of the users favour it. The general search engine breakdown (as of April, 2022) is as follows:
- Google (97.32%),
- Bing (1.66%),
- Yahoo! (0.46%),
- Petal Search (0.22%),
- DuckDuckGo (0.19%),
- Yandex (0.1%).
Given the above data, your SEO activities should definitely focus on Google, as its competitors are practically inconsequential.
To optimise the website, you must also take into consideration the relative popularity of various internet browsers in Romania (as of April, 2022 data):
- Chrome (70.27%),
- Safari (12.66%),
- Firefox (4.24%),
- Samsung Internet (4.1%),
- Instabridge (3.21%),
- Edge (2.39%).
Once again, Google’s Chrome enjoys the dominant position (at 70.27%), though its dominance is less visible than in the case of search engines. The substantial percentage controlled by Apple’s flagship Safari browser is notable as well.
E-commerce market in Romania
The overall value of Romania’s e-commerce market in 2019 was 4.3 billion Euro. This indicates a 20% increase over the previous year. The overall income for 2020 was 5.6 billion Euro, an increase of 30% compared to 2019. Over 72% of online store traffic in Romania occurs via cell phones. Likewise, most online transactions (approx. 57%) are conducted using a mobile device. This is key information if you want to optimise your online store or plan advertising activities. The average value of an online shopping cart at checkout is 98 Euro. ARPU (average revenue per user) in Romania has been growing dynamically – it is estimated to reach over 200 Euro by 2024.
Approx. 25,000 online stores are active in Romania. The most popular e-commerce outlet in Romania is eMag.ro, available both to individual sellers offering second-hand goods and to entrepreneurs. The full list of the five most popular e-commerce outlets in Romania is as follows:
- eMag.ro,
- Okazii.ro,
- Alterx.ro,
- Domo.ro,
- Flanco.ro.
What are Romanians most likely to buy online? These are the most popular e-commerce industries:
- electronics,
- IT and PC,
- clothing/fashion,
- cosmetics,
- home decorations,
- books,
- products for children.
What are the basic characteristics of Romanian e-consumers? 52.3% of them are 16–34 years old. 46% of them choose to pay on delivery. 33% of them pay with a credit/debit card, and 16% favour PayPal. The consumers’ greatest fear while shopping online is that the products they receive will differ from those they saw on the website. A substantial percentage of local consumers are reluctant to use online shopping, as they cannot see and test the products, and fear being deceived. Free delivery can encourage many Romanian clients to hit the “buy” button.
What domain should you choose?
If you intend to run a business on the Romanian market, select the national “.ro” domain. It will positively affect search engine positioning, improve reception by the clients, gain their trust and strengthen the website’s conversion ratio. If you are active on many markets, you might want to use the European “.eu” domain or the global “.com” one. Then, you just need to add specific language versions to the appropriate registries. For Romania, the complete suffix would be “.com/ro”, for instance. Standard principles apply – try to make the domains simple and to the point.
Why should you begin to promote your business in Romania?
E-commerce income in Romania is on a quick and steady upward trajectory, as it increased by 30% in 2020 compared to the previous year. It is one of the more dynamically growing markets in Europe. As a consequence, it is an excellent time to establish your business on the Romanian market. It is still not quite as competitive as its Western European equivalents, and is characterised by considerable flexibility. Considering that the accelerated growth rate will be sustained in years to come, your chances of success increase accordingly.
Link building in Romania
To achieve a good level of Google.ro visibility, you should pay attention to two elements – namely, website optimisation and the links connected directly to it. You should take care of the latter ASAP to steadily build the domain’s power which, in turn, will translate into better search engine results. Links secured through Content Marketing (sponsored articles on local websites, preferably embedded on the “.ro” domain) will be most beneficial here. Remember to ensure the links have the “dofollow” attribute, as it will maximise their SEO utility. You can also gain useful links by posting comments or posts (word-of-mouth marketing) to diversify your link profile.
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.
See how your website traffic and revenue will increase!
Drag the slider to see the effects of positioning.
SEO360®
regular SEO
How does the SEO process work in Romania?
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:
- http://ranking.gemius.com/ro/
- https://gs.statcounter.com/
Let’s stay in touch
+48 500 050 939
office@seogroup.pl
FAQ
What should you pay attention to while positioning on the Romanian market?
First of all, ensure the website is competently translated into Romanian and correctly optimised for the local version of Google. You should also adjust the website to the Romanian users’ preferences and behaviour to improve the conversion ratio. We are talking about both the purely technical aspects and the User Experience itself. Comprehensive link building and correct optimisation of the website in terms of technology and content are critical here if you want to improve Google.ro visibility.
