Last year was a unique year for e-commerce – restrictions on the operation of brick-and-mortar stores directed consumers' attention to online shopping platforms, creating new growth opportunities for retailers both large and small. But did e-commerce owners seize the opportunity to take SEO measures and increase their website's online visibility? What trends were noticeable in online store SEO in 2020? This was examined by experts who created the Senuto report on e-commerce in Poland. Here are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from the presented statistics.
What does the report contain?
The Senuto report considered all online stores visible in Polish Google, which totals 87,489 e-commerce sites . Their visibility was assessed based on the number of phrases in the TOP 3, TOP 10, and TOP 50. This data allows for the measurement of estimated website traffic, meaning whether potential customers can easily find a given website online. The collected data allowed us to determine that all these stores generate approximately 371 million visits per month. The report also reveals that:
- Allegro generates the most organic traffic – approximately 69 million visits/month,
- all online stores in Poland are jointly visible in the TOP 10 on 28,504,337 phrases,
- TOP 500 most visible e-commerce stores are visible on average 1,200 phrases in the TOP 10,
- 70 % of all online stores in Poland are small stores with less than 1000 indexed URLs.
The statistics provide much more information, but it is worth taking a closer look.
How important is the age of a website?
Although as much as 43% of all e-commerce sites currently operating in Poland are no more than five years old , their share in the aggregate organic traffic of online stores is very small. The TOP 500 most visible e-commerce platforms include only 29 stores in this age range, representing 6% of all e-commerce sites included in this list. Furthermore, well over two-thirds of the stores in the TOP 500 have been operating for over ten years, even though there are far fewer of them than younger e-commerce platforms.
(The rest of the article can be found below the form)
What conclusions can be drawn from this? Not particularly shocking. First and foremost, it confirms that domain age is a factor in website rankings, and a long and valuable website history can positively impact search engine robots' ratings. The second conclusion is something both SEO specialists and owners of optimized domains have long known – that the results of SEO efforts take time. SEO is a process, and to catch up with competitors who have been online longer, we must exercise patience and implement comprehensive measures. However, the example of the 29 stores in the TOP 500 that are less than five years old shows that young stores also have a chance in the race for consumer attention – although, of course, it's important to remember that success here only comes with a wealth of work and specialist knowledge.
The most popular thematic categories
Senuto's report shows that the Home & Garden category holds the largest share of the e-commerce market – a staggering 16,70% . Second place, narrowly behind, was taken by Style & Fashion , and third place in the rankings was taken by Arts & Entertainment . This certainly means that these industries have the most online stores, although this doesn't necessarily mean the most competition. If a specific category has many e-commerce sites but their SEO is poor, achieving high search engine rankings isn't as difficult as it might seem for a well-positioned website.
The report also included a breakdown of which domains are best utilizing their potential. The number of subpages for individual online stores was compared with the number of subpages appearing in the TOP 10 for at least one keyword. Based on this, the SEO effectiveness rate was measured. Interestingly, of the 20 domains with the best effectiveness rate, seven were online pharmacies.
The most popular e-commerce platforms
The report presents interesting data regarding the most popular e-commerce platforms in Poland. It turns out that the largest number of online stores use WooCommerce , but their total visibility in Google (number of phrases and URLs in the top 10) is almost three times lower than that of PrestaShop , which ranked second in popularity. The technologies in third and fourth place, Shoper and IdoSell Shop , also beat WooCommerce in terms of visibility. Magento is also noteworthy . It only ranks eighth in the ranking, and is used by just over 2,000 stores (out of 57,000 surveyed). However, it has the highest average domain visibility of all the technologies analyzed. This means that if we divide the number of URLs in the top 10 by the number of stores using this platform, we get the highest result.
Does this mean that WooCommerce makes it harder to rank a website, while Magento makes it easier to achieve top search engine rankings? Not necessarily. Most likely, WooCommerce is simply used mostly by small stores that don't invest in SEO, while Magento is used mostly by large e-commerce companies aware of the role of SEO in modern marketing.
Does content convert?
Of the 1000 most visible online stores, just over 50% regularly publish content on their blogs, meaning they have at least 20 posts displayed in search results. This demonstrates the widespread use of content marketing in website SEO. Interestingly, only 25% of articles published by online stores generate more than 100 visits per month, and only 5,6% generate more than 1000 visits. Over half of all blog posts generate fewer than 10 visits per month. What does this mean? Content marketing can be a huge support for SEO efforts and generate significant organic traffic, but only if the published texts are valuable and well-optimized for search engines, and most e-commerce publishers fail to meet these criteria.
How has the pandemic affected e-commerce?
In 2020, over 1000 fewer online stores were established than in 2019, and surprisingly, most of them were in the "Style and Fashion" category. E-commerce in this category saw a decline in interest at the turn of the first and second quarters of the year, but the following months generally saw growth. The increased interest in online shopping is also evident in other industries – as many as two-thirds of all online stores saw an increase in views compared to 2019 – an average of 82,53% . Only one-third of sales platforms recorded weaker results, but the average here is much lower – 26,14%.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- What data does the Senuto report contain on the Polish e-commerce market in 2021?
- Which industries have the largest share in the Polish online shopping market?
