SEO in Prague: how to rank on Google and Seznam in 2026

Ask most web studios in Prague which search engine they optimise for and the honest answer is one: Google. It is the reflex, and for an English-speaking or international audience it is usually right. But if any of your customers are Czech, you are leaving a real slice of traffic on the table, because a meaningful share of searches in this country still run through Seznam.

The good news is that ranking on both is not two jobs. Most of the work overlaps. The trick is knowing the handful of places where Seznam wants something Google does not, and doing those few things on purpose.

How much does Seznam actually matter?

Seznam.cz is the home-grown Czech search engine, and for years it genuinely rivalled Google here. Its share has slipped, and you will see wildly different numbers quoted depending on who is selling what, but the pattern is consistent: Google leads, and Seznam holds a stubborn minority that skews toward older users, local intent and Czech-language queries.

The point is not the exact percentage. It is who those people are. If you run a restaurant, a clinic, a tradesperson business or a local shop, the Czech customer typing “instalatér Praha” into Seznam is exactly the person you want, and your competitors who ignored Seznam are not there to compete for the click. A minority channel with low competition and high local intent is worth far more than its raw share suggests.

The 80 percent that serves both

Before the Seznam-specific parts, the reassuring truth: strong technical SEO ranks you on both engines at once. Seznam is less sophisticated than Google, so a site that satisfies Google usually satisfies Seznam comfortably. That means the fundamentals are shared work:

• A genuinely fast, clean site. Both engines reward pages that load quickly and are built on a sound structure. This is the same argument we make in why fast sites win customers, and it pays off in two search engines instead of one.
• Clean URLs, unique titles and descriptions, readable markup. Seznam’s crawler is happiest with exactly the tidy structure Google expects.
• Real content that answers a real query. Thin, padded pages struggle everywhere.

If your foundation is right, you are already most of the way to ranking on Seznam. If it is not, no amount of Seznam-specific tactics will save it, and that is usually where a proper SEO audit starts.

Register with both, not just Google

The single most common miss is simple: businesses submit their site to Google Search Console and stop there. Seznam has its own equivalent, Seznam Webmaster (search.seznam.cz/wmt), and it costs nothing. Verify your domain, submit the same sitemap you gave Google, and Seznam will crawl and index you far faster than if you wait to be found.

While you are there, do the same for Bing. Three registrations, one afternoon, and your site is discoverable everywhere a Czech customer might look. We handle this on every project, but it is straightforward enough to do yourself.

Write in real Czech, not translated Czech

This is where Seznam quietly punishes shortcuts. As a Czech-first engine, it is good at recognising natural Czech and less forgiving of text that reads like it came out of a translation tool. Awkward phrasing, wrong declensions and calqued English sentence structure do not just read badly to a human, they weaken the page.

That matters even more if your site is bilingual. English-speaking customers and Czech customers search with different words, and the Czech ones lean toward Seznam. A machine-translated Czech version often ranks worse than no Czech version at all. We wrote about doing this properly in bilingual websites for the Czech market: real copy in each language, correct hreflang, no duplicate-content traps.

Local SEO: Firmy.cz is the Seznam of maps

For a local business, the map pack matters as much as the classic results, and here the two ecosystems split. Google has the Google Business Profile. Seznam has Firmy.cz, its business directory, which feeds Seznam’s local results and Mapy.cz.

Claim and complete both. Same name, same address, same phone number, spelled identically in every listing, because inconsistent details are the fastest way to confuse both engines. A complete Firmy.cz entry with photos, opening hours and a clear category is one of the highest-return, lowest-effort moves a Prague small business can make, and most never bother.

Selling online? Feed Zboží.cz

If you run an e-shop, Seznam gives you one more channel Google-only stores miss: Zboží.cz, the Seznam product-comparison service, alongside Google Shopping. A clean product feed submitted to both puts your products in front of Czech shoppers who compare prices before they buy, which in this market is most of them. We build the feed into custom stores from the start, a point we get into in Shoptet versus a custom e-shop.

A note on paid, so the map is complete

Organic is the focus here, but the same split runs through advertising: Google Ads reaches the Google audience, and Sklik is Seznam’s ad network for everyone else. You do not need both on day one. The reason to know Sklik exists is the same reason to know Seznam exists: there is a Czech audience your competitors are not bidding against, often at a lower cost per click.

The honest version

Seznam is not a magic shortcut, and anyone promising you overnight rankings on either engine is worth walking away from. What Seznam is, for a business serving Czech customers, is a channel with real traffic and unusually thin competition, reachable with a few deliberate additions to work you should be doing anyway.

Our approach is boring on purpose: build the site fast and clean so it ranks on both engines by default, write the Czech in actual Czech, register everywhere, and complete the local listings that feed each map. No tricks, no monthly retainer for a report nobody reads. If you want to know where your current site stands on both Google and Seznam, tell us the address and we will send back an honest read within 24 hours, along with the two or three fixes that would move the needle most. You can also see our web design work in Prague and the full pricing before you decide anything.