SEO in Poland, just like in most western countries, is heavily relying on Google algorithms and the search engine itself. According to www.gs.statcounter.com, as of May 2019, Google has no real competition in Poland, gaining popularity year after year. Just this month it was used by 98,68% of all web users here, with other engines like Yahoo! and Bing scoring way below 1%. With such monopolistic market, SEO specialists have no reason to think hard about gaining results anywhere else. Its much more effective to simply go for everything Google has to offer and use it to our advantage, but less to do doesn’t always mean easy. How do we make it to the top?

First rule of SEO in Poland – get to know your audience

Knowing that Google is almost the only search engine used in Poland, the best strategy that SEO specialists can go for is getting to know their audience more. We must know when, where and how people use the Internet – creating our content according to the devices they use, browsers they choose and times when they’re most active, we can carefully select what is shown, when and where.

SEO in Poland - Search Engine

A PBI/Gemius report [1] from April 2019 shows that around 28,2 million Poles used the Internet, splitting between 13,9 million women and 14,3 million men. Cumulatively, they reached around 55,8 billion views and spent around 1h 41min online daily, per person. It may not seem like a lot for some people, but when we take into consideration that each minute of those nearly two hours meant being exposed to ads, paid content and websites perfected to reach the top, in terms of SEO it gives endless possibilities.  

SEO in Poland - Desktop vs. Mobile

It’s also worth knowing how people split their time online between devices. Although mobile can still be a little less used than in the US or the UK, the number of people using it more than their desktop is constantly growing. The same report shows that in April, 22,6 million people connected to the web via desktops and laptops, 24,2 million through smartphones and just around 3,5 million through tablets. The data seems to be consistent with other reports and stats, as shown on the diagram above.

Browsers in Poland – what people use to search the Internet?

The idea of different browsers having impact on how we plan our SEO may not be as obvious as with devices and search engines, but it means a lot in terms of website design and even the plug-ins we use to make it work perfectly. Going back to the stats we were able to pull out from StatCounter, Google Chrome has about 78,34% browser market share in Poland, with Firefox coming second with 6,66%, Samsung Internet with 5,25%, Opera with 3,73%, Safari with 2,21% and others scoring not more than 2%. With that in mind, we know what to use to make sure that everyone sees the website exactly as we planned.

Browser in Poland

E-commerce in Poland – how digital ads change our market?

The role of Internet in our lives is constantly growing, which also reflects on the way we make and receive ads from companies. In 2018, online ads were worth around 510 million PLN more than the year before, which meant a 13% growth compared to the previous years. As an effect, the advertising spending of 2018 reached a record 4,5 billion PLN. It’s good to know that we’re spending more money on ads online, but it’s also worth knowing which ones are the most cost-effective. According to the IAB research [2], almost half of all online ads were display (49,6%), one-third of them were SEM (31,7%), just 15,3% went to general online text ads, and the remaining 2,2% was the lowest ever score for e-mail marketing.

Digital Advertising in Poland

Source: https://iab.org.pl/badania-i-publikacje/reklama-cyfrowa-z-rekordowa-wartoscia-45-mld-zl-iab-polskapwc-adex/

Digital advertising in Poland is constantly changing and evolving, with users more eager to switch to mobile and use it as their primary source of all information. In 2018 alone, ads for mobile were worth around 1,2 billion PLN, with growth rate of 35% compared to the year before. Last year we’ve also seen growing importance of programmatic ads, online videos and social media, which are all equally as important as a classic banner ad supported by Google. This shows that people are ready to be targeted with content not by the big companies, but their friends, brands they trust and influencers, who may become one of the most important ad spaces on the Internet in 2019. Creating content that’s relevant to them gets better reviews than ever before, which for SEO specialists means more work finding and getting to know their target groups, but also more success when their ads actually reach their intended audience.

SEO in Poland. How to get the best results on the market?

Now that we know who uses the Internet in Poland, how they use it and what ads are getting the best response, now it’s time to actually check which SEO strategies and mechanisms work best on the polish online market. Our experience, backed up by other marketing houses, researchers and statistics shows that the most popular services at the moment are SEO for global phrases, local phrases, long tail phrases and all sorts of guides that answer people’s most searched questions. Used in the right way, they can create some well-balanced content that looks great not only for the robots, but the audience as well. After all, we don’t target the bots to answer their questions – we make content to reach the people and market it better than our competition. We can’t forget, however, that Google is constantly waiting for marketers to increase the quality of their content, creating new algorithms and updates to make the web a better place.

“Luckily, for most people in SEO in Poland, 2018 was a quiet and easy year – at least for those focused on quality, rather than quantity. Google didn’t make massive changes to their algorithms like they used to do the years before, which means neither good nor bad websites were affected. The only hurdle that we had to overcome was the Medic Core Update, which is another reminder for those working in SEO that we have to work on content quality according to E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) model. We have to use it if we want to be visible” – says Łukasz Jaworski, member of the board at LTB.

Trends and future predictions for SEO in Poland – how we see the upcoming changes?

Being on top of the competition and getting our clients visible means we always have to take trends and predictions into consideration while working on our next strategy. Right now we are mostly focusing on responsive websites and Google RankBrain which are already affecting the market in 2019. As our CEO says,

“trends that I’m waiting for are mostly changes in SERP. As a regular Google user, I’m counting on the number of the biggest advertising portals to get lower, making space for actual websites to get to the top. Right now, if you put „mechanik Wrocław” in Google, you’ll find only one website in the TOP 3, and if you do the same for property market, you won’t find anything of value in the TOP 10 except collective listings for developers and property agents. I hope Google will change that soon”.

He adds that he hopes for UX, Dwell Time, CTR and User Intent to become more meaningful as far as creating page ranks goes. The key to that would be to raise the emphasis on analysing and understanding the user. Will it happen in 2019 though?

SEO in Poland - SERP

Are there any trends we should be worried about when it comes to SEO in Poland and in general? Perhaps the increasing number of paid ads shown by search engines. As a rule, they always get the top spot and we already see 4 ads – if the user sees a map as well, they have to scroll down to see the highest ranking websites and if they want to make the search quick, they won’t go down further than TOP 3. Let’s hope Google won’t allow more – after all, research shows people are not that eager to click on ads.

One more thing that can be worrying if it happens at all is voice searches. They are getting more and more attention in the States, but still lay low in Poland. Will it change in 2019, as it was supposed to the year before? And will the search results finally get more personalised and targeted at specific user groups? How will it all affect SEO in Poland? We can only wait and see.

Start SEO campaign in Poland

 

Leave a Reply

Your e-mail address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

X

Ask for pricing

* required field
Digital Agency - contact with us