In the last few month I wrote a lot about personalization of search results in Yandex and Kaliningrad search algorithm. This week Yandex released a fun tool that visualizes the profile Yandex creates for you based on your search behavior, and which is the basis for the personalized SERP you see.

For example, according to Yandex I am:

• Not a student (19%), a housewife (20%) or a mum (10%).
• Likely a manager (46%), a traveler (60%), who like music (35%) and a is bit of a geek (35%).
• Absolutely not a morning person (81%!!!).

 Find out how Yandex sees your personality by going to crypta.yandex.ru.

All search engines, including Yandex, tell you to create great content. They also tell you that the content should be unique. But what if your content gets re-posted somewhere, and what if that copy-paster ranks higher than you? This situation, I am sure, is familiar to most of us.

Search engines have been pretty good at determining the primary source of content, but sometimes they do get it wrong, and Yandex does more often than Google.

In 2011 Google came up with a way for authors to protect their rights in the SERPs with rel=”author” tag. It has proven to be a very good way to show Google the true ownership of the content as well as build up authority of you as a writer. Unfortunately, Yandex does not support rel=”author” tag. But there is an alternative.

Original Texts tool in Yandex Webmaster

Yandex gives a possibility to claim your content authorship by submitting the texts through a form in Yandex Webmaster tools before publishing them on the site.

The form is placed in Site content section in Webmaster Tools. The section is not translated into English for some reason, but the Original Texts tool can still be accessed from the first item in the list or by following this link http://webmaster.yandex.ru/site/ext_plugins.xml?wizard=api.originals.

In order for the tool to work for you, you need to make sure:

- Your site has a TIC of 10 or higher.

- You content is not shorter than 2000 characters and not longer than 32ooo characters.

- Your content is unique and cannot be found anywhere on the Internet.

- You submit plain text without HTML code.

Although Original Texts tool does not give a 100% guarantee that copied text will not over-rank your original one, in most case it will help Yandex to identify you as an author of the content.

Over last year we’ve seen a lot of changes in Yandex search algorithm, which of course affected SEO. Increased emphasis on quality of content, site usability and behavioral factors with personalized search on top of that brought Yandex SEO quality standards close to those of Google.com.

Unlike a year ago, severe penalties can be caused by low quality, keyword-stuffed or duplicate content. Keyword research, onsite SEO and link building process have become more sophisticated.

Yandex SEO DON’Ts

Duplicate, keyword-stuffed, auto-generated, and machine translated content

For us, international SEOs, it is very important to understand that Yandex SEO success requires investing time and effort into creating high quality content written in good Russian language.

A lot of international sites fail to do so, ending up with machine-translated or poorly written Russian copy that drags them down in Yandex SERPs.

Penalties for low quality content have become more severe over the last couple of years. I have seen sections or even whole websites thrown out from Yandex search index.

Excessive advertising

Yandex is striving to provide their users with best possible search results. While many people in Russia claim that Yandex search results are too commercial, what you seldom see in Yandex Top 10 is spammy sites overloaded with AdSense or Yandex.Direct ads.
During the years, there were at least 2 modifications made in Yandex search algorithm that aimed against sites using pop-ups, pop-unders and other kinds of “irritating” advertising.

Automated link buying

There are plenty of Russian SEO tools that can take care of your link building without you spending too much time on it – from threatened by Matt Cutts SAPE to sophisticated systems that can be configured in different ways to suit your SEO demands.
Sorry to say guys, the days of winning by spamming are coming to an end. Links placed in obscure places of randomly selected websites, most of which are created solely for selling links, do not work as well as they used to before.

Obsessing with rankings

SERP rankings in Yandex could be misleading metric since the arrival of regional-specific search back in 2009, and even more so after the launch of the latest Yandex search algorithm with personalized search.

Regional rankings can be tricky to monitor with rank-checking tools as the positions vary greatly in different Russian cities based on regional settings of the site and the type of keywords it is targeting. It is difficult to find regional Russian proxies, and manual check through Yandex.Webmaster can be very tiresome.

Since December 2012, when Yandex rolled out personalized search, SERP rankings almost became a thing of the past. Search results are different for 75-80% of all search queries, and all users are opted in regardless of whether they are logged in into their Yandex account or not.

Focus on small list of keywords

Due to personalization of the search results, it is a risky strategy to base Yandex SEO effort on small list of “important” keywords assigned to a few “important” pages.

It is very difficult to say how relevant people find your page to a particular (usually quite general) query. In case a significant percentage of people do not find the page relevant, the probability you site won’t show up for them in top 10 is very high, and there is no way for you to know what their SERPs look like.

Yandex SEO DOs

Continuous work with usability, design and conversion

Usability, design and conversion became a vital part of Yandex SEO success from the day when behavioral factors were incorporated into Yandex search algorithm. Now, with the personalization of search, they way your visitors interact with your site is even more important. The less they bounce and the longer the stay – the better and more relevant your site will seem to Yandex.

Working with site snippets

Snippets are very important for Yandex SEO for the same reason as user experience – they are the first impression of your website and they influence behavioural factors. Moreover, personalized search algorithm stops displaying sites with low CTR from the SERPs or lower them in the search results, as they do not seem interesting to the users.

Make sure title and description tags are well written; utilize rich snippets possibilities when possible.

Broad keyword portfolio

Successful SEO strategy for Yandex in 2013 will be based on a keyword portfolio. Instead of focusing on a handful of keywords, create content around them using different combinations and synonyms. Try to give relevant answers to the questions your potential customers might have about the product / service you are promoting.

Creating unique and useful for the reader content

The content you place on your site should be interesting, engaging and look appealing to the users. Use images, interactive elements, and format text in a way that is easy to read.

It is not enough to only create good content anymore. Presentation is also important. Always keep in mind that user behaviour on your page is an important ranking factor for Yandex.

Building links naturally (or at least carefully)

Link building for Yandex has been ugly for years. For most site owners SEO involved using services for submitting sites to hundreds of directories, spamming social bookmaking sites and buying large chunks of links through Russian link brokers.
These days link building tactics for Yandex changed. I am not saying that paid links do not work anymore. They do. And SAPE is more alive than ever. I do say however that spammy links with exact keywords in anchor texts located in obscure areas will not give the desired effect in 2013.

Most links in Russia remain paid. The selection of placements for links however should be a careful process. Yandex likes links from:

- relevant, on-topic sites
- trusted directories (e.g. Yandex.Catalog, DMOZ etc.)
- news sites (preferably listed in Yandex.News and Google News)
- popular on-topic blogs with a real reader base

I believe the links from sites that don’t participate in SAPE or similar give better effect. Although link brokers might seem like a shortcut and a time-saver, I do recommend to refrain from relying on those.

My general feeling is that in 2013 all of us, who work with Yandex SEO, should take another look at the sites we deal with. For years, the optimization and link building were the focus. Now the 3rd element – user behavior – has come in and strongly positioned itself in the algorithm of the search engine. Even if you are ranking high enough, work on the UX, try to get them to stay on your site and Yandex will give you some extra love.

In one of my resent posts I wrote about the test Yandex was running with Yandex.Direct layout placing ads to the bottom of the page instead of the right side of the SERP. The test proved to be successful, and the CTR for the ads positioned in the bottom of the page was 2,5 times higher than it used to be for the ads on the right hand side. Given the significant improvement in click through rates, Yandex rolled out the change to all Yandex.Direct ads.

While the new layout results in better performance, there are now fewer ad slots on the page – 3 for “premium” placement ads (on the top of the search results) and 4 for “guaranteed” placement ads (previously the top positions on the right, now – the ad slots under the search results). The so-called dynamic ad slots will be moved to the 2nd, 3rd and later SERPs, and therefore will get fewer impressions.

The new ad slot in the bottom of the page received the same design and features that the premium ad slot: same background color, favicons, and site links:

In 2011 Google did a similar change to AdWords layout, and the performance of the ads in the bottom was also better.

The change was generally well received by both advertisers and Yandex audience, and will definitely help companies to improve the quality of paid traffic from Yandex.

Funny April Fool’s joke from Yandex: they said earlier today that they invented a unique algorithm that can analyze emails in Yandex.Mail inboxes and detect whether the message you are reading is a truth or a lie

Would have been a great feature. Too bad it’s a joke!

Yandex keeps tweaking their advertising products and making them better. In the beginning of the year the company introduced 3 new features to make Yandex.Direct ads more effective.

1. Image ads for Yandex Advertising Network (YAN)

Being used to Google AdWords, I was always missing image ad formats in Yandex content network. Images are so much more appealing; they attract attention and give better impression about the product than boring text links.

Finally, last week Yandex introduced image ads for YAN. They are not exactly banners, but it is a huge improvement.

This week the new ads are being shown and tested on Yandex properties, and will spread over Yandex Advertising Network from 28th of March.

The images can be easily added via Yandex.Direct interface by uploading files from the Internet or computer. The format for the images is very flexible:

- GIF, PNG or JPG file types

- size from 150 to 5000X5000 pixel

- weight up to 10MB

The early adopters reported 60-400% increase in CTR, lower CPC and better ROI. However, the advertisers, who are not satisfied with the performance of image ads, can easily opt out and return to text link ads.

2. Favicons in Yandex.Direct search ads

Until recently Yandex only displayed favicons in organic search results. Now they are also available in Yandex Direct search ads (only for premium positions).

Favicons now are more important than ever. They have to be created with care, and the yellow background of Yandex ads should be taken into consideration.

3. Search ads in the bottom of the page

The “guaranteed” placements ad units (ads on the right side of search results) now can be also shown in the bottom of the page.

This feature has been rolled out for a small number of queries, but the the trials have shown that in a lot of cases moving guaranteed placements to the bottom of the SERP results into better CTR, more clicks and lower CPC.

Yandex shows up to 4 ads in this new placement, and like for ads in the premium placement, displays sitelinks.

All these new features allow advertisers to better utilize Yandex.Direct and get more traffic and leads from existing campaigns.

Mobile marketing world is changing rapidly, and even more rapidly in a growing market like Russia. Just a few months ago in my post about Russian mobile marketing I mentioned that Opera was the most popular mobile browser in the market. Well, it is still the case today, but will Opera manage to keep its leading position by the end of the year?

According to StatCounter data, it is unlikely. Opera has been rapidly losing market share in Russia during the past 2 years, while Android browser and Safari have been steadily growing.

Although the statistics from StatCounter are usually somewhat differ from traditionally reliable Russian sources like LiveInternet, I believe this graph is a very good illustration of market trends. Opera Mini is mainly used on Symbian-powered phones, the amount of which is shrinking year over year. On the other hand, market of smartphones in Russia is growing about 30% per quarter [in Russian] according to MTS (one of the largest mobile operators in Russia). In Q4 of 2012 alone there were 4.3 million smartphones sold in Russia, the majority of which were Android devices.

Last week in Japan was released a book, the first book about global SEM and SEO ever written and published in Asia. It covers SEO and SEM principles for main search engines in Asia – Baidu, Naver, Yandex and Google. I was honored to have been asked for input for the Yandex part. Thank you Info Cubic Japan for this exciting opportunity to contribute!

Yandex as a search engine was created 16 years ago, back in 1997, and became a brand in 2000. A lot has changed during the years, both for users and for SEOs. Let’s have a look at the evolution of Yandex search algorithm.

There are no records or announcements about Yandex ranking formula dated earlier than 2007. 2007 was the year when Yandex started actively working with their search algorithm and communicate the changes to the community. Ever since, every new ranking formula was named after a city in Russia, and the logic behind naming them is taken from an old Russian game called “cities”: each newly introduced formula’s name starts from the last letter of the previous formula’s name:

Magadan -> Nakhodka -> Arzamas -> Snezhinsk -> Konakovo -> Obninsk -> Krasnodar -> Reykjavik -> Kaliningrad. On the map this journey would look like this:

Let’s look a what this journey looked like for Russian SEO.

Magadan (April 2008)

The search algorithm Magadan was a revolution. It had at least twice as many ranking factors as the previous one, where uniqueness of site content received quite an important role.

Yandex learned to understand transliteration (spelling Russian words with Latin characters – for instance, in URLs), commonly used abbreviations, and rank documents based on this knowledge.

Another interesting feature was that Yandex started to better understand text and to rank relevant documents even if they did not contain exact keyword combinations.

Magadan was also the algorithm that started indexing and ranking websites in English.

Nakhodka (September 2008)

Nakhodka came half a year later. At that point Yandex learned to understand the meaning of stop-words (prepositions, conjunctions etc.) and use them for ranking documents.

Thesaurus of the search engine was expanded, which lead to to better understanding and ranking of synonyms and spelling variations.

Arzamas (April 2009)

Arzamas was the algorithm that brought real local search to Yandex. It was based on classification of all search queries into two types: geo-dependant and geo-indepenant. For geo-depenant queries the local businesses received priority in local SERPs (e.g. a Novosibirsk taxi company site would rank better in Novosibirsk than a site of a taxi company from Moscow).

Additionally, Arzamas was the first ranking algorithm that went hard on pages with pop-up and pop-under advertising.

Snezhinsk (November 2009)

In Snezhinks Yandex introduced several thousands new ranking factors, which provoked somewhat of a panic in the Russian SEO community. The main changes I noted were:

- Trusted sites (brands) got generally higher positions in search results

- Unique content because a must, and sites with duplicate content got punished

- Old links became more valuable than newly acquired ones

- New type of penalty for low quality sites – AGS – was introduced

All these changes made it more difficult and time-consuming for new sites to get first page of Yandex search results.

From a technology perspective, MatrixNet (self-learning engine) was launched.

All these changes took Yandex SEO to a new level, where quality of SEO work became more important than quantity of links.

Konakovo (December 2009)

Local search algorithm, introduced initially for 19 regions in Russia with the launch of Arzamas, was extended to 1250 cities throughout the country.

Obninsk (September 2010)

The main difference of that Obninsk brought to Yandex SEO was devaluing a large amount of “SEO links” (paid links).

Other changes in the algorithm included changes to ranking formula for geo-independant search queries and better way of identifying the initial source of content on case of duplication.

Krasnodar (December 2010)

Krasnodar algorithm incorporated another intelligent technology – Spectrum – the goal of which was to understand user’s search intent and serve better search results for words with more than one meaning or search queries that are too generic.

Reykjavik (August 2011)

Reykjavik was the next step towards understanding the user’s search intent. This algorithm learned to identify language preferences of a user, and depending on that, display more or fewer search results in English.

The algorithm mainly concerned searches in foreign languages, hence named after a foreign city.

Kaliningrad (December 2012)

Kaliningrad brought personalized search to Yandex users.

According to the company’s announcement 75-80% of all search results became personalized for everyone, regardless of whether the user is logged in or not (unlike Google’s personalization).

Yandex claims that the audience responded better to the personalized results, while SEOs have to once again learn ow to adjust to the new environment.

Looking back, Yandex has come up with a new significant change in their search algorithm at least one per year, and sometimes twice. What will be the next one? All we can say right now is that probably the name will start with a D.

Russian SEM spend in 2012 was valued at 1.4 billion US dollars, which is a 44% increase comparing to 2011, reported Russian bid management service eLama.

In 2012 Yandex remained the leader of contextual advertising market, followed by Google.ru and lastly Begun.

While the main players are still the same as in 2011, there are some major shifts: Begun lost significant part of the market, while both Yandex and Google gained market share.