SEO in Slovakia

Slovakia, or actually the Slovak Republic, is a country located in Central Europe, bordering the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Austria and Hungary. It has a population of over 5.4 million people, almost 90% of whom have access to the Internet. The largest city, and also the capital of Slovakia, is Bratislava. Interestingly, it is the only capital city in the entire world which borders two countries at the same time: Austria and Hungary.

Slovakia may be one of the smallest European countries, but, given the growth of its e-commerce, it now rivals many larger countries on our continent. Slovakia has one official language: Slovak, which is spoken by the vast majority of its citizens. The country acceded to the European Union in 2004 and a few years later, in 2009, replaced its national Slovak koruna with the euro, which became the official currency of Slovakia.

When focussing on the high percentage of the population with access to the Internet, it is good to get to know the preferences of Slovaks regarding web-surfing devices. Statistics show that more users prefer computers, but their advantage is not very significant, as confirmed by the following data (from February 2022):

• desktop (51.95%),
• mobile (46.58%),
• tablet (1.47%).

Given the large share of mobile devices in the choices of Slovak e-consumers, making your website mobile-friendly is an absolute must.

When it comes to social media use, it concerns more than 74% of the entire Slovak population, and the most popular channel is Facebook, with 79% of all users (data for 2021):

• Facebook (79%),
• Pinterest (13%),
• Twitter (3%),
• Instagram (2%),
• YouTube (2%).

Moreover, the number of social media users in Slovakia has recently increased by 30,000 or 0.7% (early 2022 vs. 2021). Thus, it can be seen that the interest of the country’s population in this channel is growing and it is worth taking its potential into account when developing an SEO strategy.

E-commerce market in Slovakia

The value of the Slovak e-commerce market reached 1 billion US dollars in 2021. Moreover, Slovakia does not show any sign of slowing down! It is estimated that revenues from online shopping will grow in the coming years.

How do typical Slovak e-consumers behave? Their purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by the price. They tend to make online transactions using a smartphone. When seeing a negative opinion about a product, they abandon their purchase and leave the online shop. They pay considerable attention to green consumerism – a Slovak is willing to spend more if the purchase will be environmentally friendly. Moreover, since healthy lifestyle is in vogue in Slovakia, Slovak e-shoppers take note of the composition and origin of products.

Continuing the topic of interests of Slovak e-consumers, let’s take a look at the top e-commerce sites generating the highest turnover in Slovakia (data for 2021):

• alza.sk (USD 571 million),
• mall.sk (USD 69 million),
• itesco.sk (USD 54 million),
• hm.com (USD 47 million),
• nay.sk (USD 41 million).

To sum up, the top three websites (alza.sk, mall.sk and itesco.sk) account for half of the revenue from the online channel in Slovakia, each having a Slovak domain (.sk).

Why start promoting your business in Slovakia?

Considering Slovakia’s potential as an emerging e-commerce market with a rapid growth rate and inhabitants accustomed to shopping online, there is nothing else to do but enter the game today. Moreover, interest in online shopping among Slovaks continues to grow, so it makes sense to stay one step ahead of the competition. A high position in search results will contribute to building an awareness of your brand, as well as its reputation in a high-potential European market. Naturally, effective SEO in the Slovak market will result in increased sales and profits for your business.

Link building in Slovakia

Link building is one of the core elements of effective SEO activities. If you are thinking about expanding your business into the Slovak 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 helpful tips:

Acquiring quality links.

An extremely important factor in link acquisition is to ensure high link quality. It is easy to acquire a large number of low-impact links or links of dubious reputation. The trick is to develop a strategy for acquiring links that are valuable and come from quality portals.

Remember about link diversification.

Acquiring links leading to our website from various sources is an absolute must-have for Google algorithms. This will help us to avoid unnecessary problems in the form of penalties imposed by the aforementioned Internet leader, which counts ‘monotony’ in linking among spamming techniques. The most popular methods of acquiring links include: sponsored articles and mentions on social media or posts on Internet forums (buzz marketing).

Thematic publication sites.

When preparing your link building strategy, make sure that the places of publication of your articles are selected in accordance with the topics of your area of business. By doing so, you will increase your chances of attracting potential e-consumers (who visit online industry portals of interest) to buy your product. In addition, you will be better viewed by Google, which does not like articles published on websites dealing with completely different topics, considering such practices to be unnatural.