2. Optimizing for Yandex Takes More Time SEO specialists optimizing for both Google and Yandex I talked to unanimously find Yandex optimization slower. Googlebot is constantly crawling and indexing new pages. This means when you publish new URLs, add a significant piece of indexable content with its own URL to your website, or ping major ping services, you might see increased traffic within 24 hours after making the change. Meanwhile, Yandex’s index seems to be re-calculated at a much slower pace. When optimizing for Yandex, make sure you (and your employer) allow for more time to see results on particular optimization activities—both on-page and off-page. Of course, when it comes to both Yandex and Google, it takes time before you can start measuring the true impact your SEO campaign is having. Make sure you don’t stop too soon. 3. Manipulating User Behavior SEO experts have argued back and forth for years on whether or not user behavior is an important ranking factor. It certainly seems to be—real-life experiments have been shown to affect SERP results, and Google has blatantly stated that “User reactions to particular search results or search result lists may be gauged so that results on which users often click will receive a higher ranking.” However, with Yandex, there’s no debate—user behavior is a HUGE ranking factor and plays a much bigger role than other signals, such as link building. Websites that encourage users to stay on-site for as long as possible will always rank better than their competitors. As a result, some Yandex SEO specialists have taken to manipulating user behavior metrics with black hat tactics, especially comment spamming. Back in 2011, Yandex published two articles (here and here) on their Webmaster blog warning webmasters about the dangers of manipulating user behavior for SEO, but it continues to be a widespread technique despite the risk of severe penalties. If you want to appeal to your users with Yandex, the safest strategy is the same one you’d use for Google—creating quality content that appeals to your audience. As Yandex’s about page states, “how useful and user-friendly a product is matters more than how much money we can make from it.” To measure user behavior on your website, Yandex recommends you regularly analyze your web server logs. Pay special attention to: Traffic sources: Understand which sources bring the most visitors to your website. Search queries – Analyze which queries bring visitors to your site. Target pages – Measure conversions on pages like shopping carts and forms. Platform specs – Figure out what platforms users use to find you and optimize for a better on-site experience. 4. Backlink Traffic In 2013, Alexander Sadovsky, the Head of Web Search at Yandex, announced that links would no longer be a ranking factor for commercial queries. Instead, Yandex redoubled its emphasis on user behavior. While this change, implemented in 2014, didn’t kill link building, it certainly changed the game. Now, there’s a common belief in Yandex SEO that links which demonstrate actual traffic are more beneficial than thousands of links that never get clicked, because they showcase user interest. According to Dmitry Sevalniov, head of SEO at a Moscow-based digital marketing agency pixelplus.ru, Yandex takes into account multiple factors related to user behaviour, including: The volume, shares, and behavior of non-organic-search traffic. The presence and the number of backlinks that actually bring traffic. However, Dmitry cautions these numbers are secondary factors that simply contribute to the more important user behavior metrics. Increased traffic from backlinks doesn’t necessarily equal quality backlinks. In the end, optimization practices for Yandex are similar to those you use for Google: Focus on quality links over quantity. Earn relevant backlinks from sites related to your niche. Use links to build your authority and credibility. Remember, on their own, backlinks are not a decisive ranking factor. They will only start to play a role when the number of sessions from the referrals is truly considerable. 5. Doman Age Equals Authority Domain age plays a more important role for ranking websites in Yandex than it does in Google. It can be challenging—and time-consuming—for new sites to get rankings. Sites with very few pages have an especially hard time. Fortunately, you can check on what Yandex believes to be the creation date for a particular page by checking the cache data in Yandex. You can do this with the help of Website Auditor (disclaimer: my tool). Website Auditor will show you how many pages of your domain have been indexed by Yandex and when they were indexed. 6. On-Page Content Matters More Google may care about fresh, high-quality content, but Yandex is obsessed. In fact, according to Matthew Woodward, some offenses (such as stuffing too many keywords on a single page) are “more dangerous [in Yandex] than in Google.” That said, there’s no universal recipe for success and the frequency of content updates depends largely on the nature the business. My general recommendation is to add fresh content as often as it makes sense for your website. However, be warned that duplicate content is hit with severe penalties—even technical mistakes may result in bigger negative penalties on Yandex rankings than you might suffer on your Google rankings. For example, e-commerce sites that have separate pages for products with minuscule differences (e.g. size, color, etc.) might risk running afoul of Yandex’s duplicate content filter. Other common mistakes include: Inter-page navigation using JavaScript or Flash – Yandex’s robot will only follow normal HTML tags, so make sure you include ordinary text links on your website even if you use another type of navigation. Too many auto-redirects – Avoid using redirects whenever possible. Page address – Give each page a unique permanent address, free of session identifiers. Cloaking – This is black hat SEO, where you show Yandex’s robot one piece of content and your visitors another. This can result in a ranking penalty. Images instead of text – Yandex’s robot can’t crawl images, so if you want your content to rank make sure it is available in text. Soft 404 – When users try to access a page that doesn’t exist, don’t redirect them to a stub page that returns a code 200 instead of a 404 message. Site engine errors – Any errors in your site’s script may affect site indexing and possibly put your website at risk. Make sure all of your site’s software works correctly at all times.
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