SEO in Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked country in central Europe with almost 60% of its land area covered by mountains. The Swiss neighbours are Italians, French, Germans, Austrians and Liechtensteiners. Officially, there is no capital city in Switzerland, so that no one would be offended. Informally it is Bern and the largest city in Switzerland is Zurich (420,000 inhabitants). Overall, the country has a population of 8.7 million people, who mainly use the three official languages: German (63%), French (23%) and Italian (8%).

The Swiss enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. Switzerland is one of the most economically stable countries, with an ever-growing GDP, giving it a place among the 20 largest economies in the world. Overall, the country is made up of 26 administrative areas (cantons) with a high level of autonomy.

The Internet penetration rate in Switzerland is 98%. This means that approximately 8.6 million inhabitants have access to the World Wide Web. Their number increased by 1.7% last year. As for browsing the Internet itself, most Swiss use computers for this purpose (data for March 2022):

• desktop (62.2%),
• mobile (35.47%),
• tablet (2.33%).

When it comes to social media use, this applies to 86% of Switzerland’s total population, with Facebook being the most popular social media platform (data for February 2022):

• Facebook (63.89%),
• Twitter (12.59%),
• Pinterest (10.57%),
• Instagram (6.83%),
• YouTube (2.34%),
• Reddit (1.27%).

The number of social media users in Switzerland, comparing the beginning of 2022 to 2021, increased by 6.2%.

E-commerce market in Switzerland

E-commerce revenues in 2021 exceeded 13.7 billion US dollars. This is an amount that must inspire awe and, of course, interest. Especially when you add an estimated average annual growth rate of 5% for the next four years. The Swiss love e-commerce. They buy goods worth nearly 20,000 Swiss francs a minute in online shops. To get an even better idea of the scale of this, it is enough to give the number of orders placed during those 60 seconds – there are 178 on average! Interestingly enough, 64% of these orders come from foreign suppliers.

The Swiss pay attention to the cost of the order, and more specifically to its final value. Here, it is important to remember to include VAT, customs or delivery charges in the final value of the transaction. If additional costs appear on the bill, and they were not mentioned during e-shopping, we may alienate the Swiss customer.

Products in the virtual shopping cart in Switzerland are most frequently put in the basket by people in the 25–34 age group, followed by the representatives of the 35–44 age group, and by the youngest age group, i.e. 15–24. The Swiss spend on average 3.5 hours a day on the web, but 22% of them stay online for more than 5 hours a day! It is also worth remembering that almost half of online shoppers use mobile devices for this purpose.

Swiss people pay attention to the origin of goods. When they find products they are interested in and one of them is offered from a known source, they will opt for it. Price is not important, it is quality and trust that counts. The Swiss also appreciate an efficient and transparent purchasing process and after-sales service.

Regarding the e-commerce providers with the highest turnover in Switzerland, the top five are as follows (data for 2021):

• digitec.ch (USD 1.411 billion),
• zalando.ch (USD 1.108 billion),
• galaxus.ch (USD 710 million),
• amazon.de (USD 580 million),
• apple.com (USD 529 million).

Digitec and Galaxus, i.e. sites 1 and 3, are one entity, offering users more than one million products, from virtually all categories, ranging from home, garden, sports, children and toys, jewellery, beauty products, to electronics and media.

Why should you start promoting your business in Switzerland?

With revenues of nearly 14 billion US dollars in 2021, Switzerland ranked 21st in terms of e-commerce in the world. With an e-commerce growth rate of 16%, Switzerland contributed to the average growth of this market on our globe (an increase of 29%). The inhabitants of this one of the richest countries in the world are accustomed to using the functionalities of the Internet. Going further, they like convenient online shopping. Price is of secondary importance to them, quality, brand sentiment and the origin of an interesting product are definitely more important.

SEO is a kind of ticket and bargaining chip to gain the attention of the Swiss. They look for interesting topics in the organic results, as well as links to interesting e-commerce sites. Free positions in the SERPs inspire their confidence and it is through them that they mainly surf the web.

According to forecasts, the e-commerce market in Switzerland is expected to surpass and break the $15 billion revenue barrier in 2022. This is a huge potential to exploit. If in this relatively small, but rich country, we find at least a piece of the e-commerce space for ourselves, our business will enter the realms of further development opportunities.

Link building in Switzerland

While positioning a website in Switzerland, it is worth starting with its adaptation in terms of providing users with the possibility to choose several language versions. Without this, it is better not to start SEO activities, because we will limit our audience. The next step is to optimise the website, including proper saturation with content related to keywords and modelling its structure according to Google requirements and the preferences of Swiss users. This must also be complemented by high-quality link building.

As in every German-speaking market, it is not the quantity but the quality of the links from reliable sites that is of the greatest importance. These of course influence the positive evaluation of Google’s algorithms. Link building should also be diverse. Redirections to our website should not only come from sponsored articles, but also popular blogs (with do-follow links), thematic forums and press portals. We need to be visible in places with a good reputation and at the same time high quality (domain rating). This will naturally translate into moving up the search results.