I find the development of the Internet in Russia very interesting to monitor. The market is huge and continues to grow, however the numbers of Internet users do not grow in the same pace as e-commerce. People surf, people are mobile, but do people buy online?

Recently I heard and read a lot of stats about Russian Internet audience. The most general numbers you can find in this presentation, given by Preston Carey of Yandex at SMX Advanced London, which I attended last week. You can see than Internet penetration in Russia is still only 43%. Hard to imagine, right? But don’t get discouraged yet. 43% of the population is approx. 46 million people, which is double the population of Scandinavia, for example.

Another research, presented by Yandex, says that Russian Internet audience grew by 18% in 2010. Most of the growth (5.8 million users) came from the “regions”, which is the Russian definition of everything outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. This can be probably explained by the fact that the prices on fast Internet connection in the “regions” dropped by 30-60%.

About e-commerce

E-commerce is growing as well, however, in my opinion, not as fast. You can see the trend: more and more Russian Internet giants are creating their own ad serving platforms. In addition to good old Yandex.Direct, Google Adwords and Begun, Russian internet audience is going to be exposed to targeted ads in all major social networks: vKontakte, Odnoklassniki.ru and MoiMir. The simplest economic principle: if there is demand, the supply will eventually match it.

What I find interesting is the industry data. According to another Russian research agency, the most successful verticals in Russian e-commerce, based on traffic and conversion, are mobile phones, computers & spare parts, and home & kitchen appliances.

The leaders in conversion were Fifty.ru (2,95%), Techhome.ru (2,85%) and Toool.ru (2,53%). I think it is worth looking into the best practices, because, from what I’ve seen, Western best practices do not always work for the Russian Internet audience.

The largest online store in Russia Ozon.ru (sort of Amazon of the Russian Internet) in their presentation at SPBRIF (Internet conference in St. Petersburg) reported the following numbers: 1 000 000 products, 1 000 employees, and 4 billion Russian Rubles (approx. $143 000 000) in sales per year.

Ozon.ru claims to have 14 652 000 visitors per month. Surprisingly, the giant of Russian e-commerce has only 0.93% conversion. Another curious fact is something Geno Prussakov, the guru of affiliate industry, twitted from SPBRIF. Apparently 80% of Ozon’s orders are paid for by cash on delivery.

The bottom line of this: preparing to open up an online business in Russia, do not base calculations on volumes. The volumes are there, but buyers might not be just yet. Investigate local payment options, analyze the strongest players in the vertical, and conduct a thorough market research before investing, as Russia is a big, but a very difficult market.

Yesterday I was browsing job listings in Moscow just to get an idea how much SEOs can potentially make in Russia. Salaries for SEO jobs vary depending on a company, but was really made me smile and shake at the same time is the skills required for the job!

Let us look at the SEO specialist job description posted by one of the biggest SEO companies..

Main Tasks:

• Delivering recommendations on changes on the client’s site in order to improve indexing, drive traffic, optimizing the code and the internal structure of the site
• Delivering recommendations in order to improve site usability and conversion
• Delivering recommendations on how to improve website content
• Monthly analytics reporting
• Coordinating link building activities and analyzing link quality
• Rapidly respond to changing algorithms of search engines

So far sounds normal…

Requirements for the candidate:

• At least 3 years of experience working with medium to large projects
• Excellent knowledge and experience in buying links, knowledge of all link brokers and their features – ?!?!?!
• Excellent knowledge of web analytics systems

While Yandex is severely fighting link buyers and claiming that the ranking algorithm has almost nothing to do with links, all you need to know to be an SEO expert is still how to buy links and how to make reports! No mentions of social media, link baiting or whatever is trendy these days among SEO people..

What can be concluded from this? Do spammy links from link brokers still work as well as 3 years ago?  Is that the kind of links you are going to get from the top SEO firm in Russia? Will this ever change?…

P.S. As a link buing expert you will make 2 – 4,5K USD.

Interesting interview. Found on the net a couple of days ago. The CEO of Yandex is talking (in English!) abough Yandex and his visions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U1y1ipiCCo

My favorite quotes:

• We planned IPO a year ago. Now we don’t need IPO. We have enough money.
• There is much more money available in Russia than brains
• 90% of searches are in Russian
• Pople use Yandex more than Google, because we search better

As I wrote earlier, my company made me the chosen one (i.e. chosen to attend a Russian Pubcon - Optimization.ru conference in Moscow).

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Most of the sessions were way too basic for any half-way experienced SEO person, and generally the conference seemed very commercial.

Anyways, I managed to learn some lessons, and here they are:

1.    Soon webmasters will be able to edit snippets shown in the SERPs. There is a chance META description will replace today’s random snippets of text.

2.    Widgets for Yandex can be a good source of traffic (it is possible to create widgets for Yandex, just the same way as for iGoogle)

Alexandr Sadovsky

3.    Yandex finally created Webmaster Guidelines (similar to Google’s guidelines). Sadovskiy (Director of search = Matt Cuts of Yandex) joked that the guidelines are for white SEO and that webmasters should try to be at least somewhere in between

4.    Yandex knows that up to 90% of all links to Russian sites are bought. Sadovskiy publically announced that buying links is BAD!

5.    One guy said that Russians are more technical that analytical. Many people use Yandex Webmaster panel, but not many use analytics packages. Besides, 54% of of clients of SEO companies look at rankings only to evaluate success of the SEO campaign, and only 22% try to connect it with sales.

6.    Liveinternet statistics is extremely useful for keyword research

7.    Social media is developing. SMO is a trendy topic in Russian Internet circles.

8.    Webmasters are mainly happy about the new Yandex search algorithm Snezhinsk. There was very little said about it though..

9.    Russian SEOs try to use statistics and math to analyze search engine algorithms and PPC bids. They like long fancy formulas. Very scientific society.

10.    Radisson SAS Slavtanskaya in Moscow is not a good hotel. At all!

I am a priveleged emplyee! Wow! I was sent to Moscow to attend the biggest Russian SEO event of the year – Optimization.ru conference organized by Ashmanov and Partners SEO agency.

The first day was really a disappointment.. I have not learned anything new. It was a lot of useless talking and no information. Nothing about Snezhinsk, the new search algorithm, nothing about any advanced SEO techniques.. nothing.

The only thing I learned is that Yandex is going to let us, webmasters, to finally control snippets in the SERPs (probabbly with the help of Meta description .. hehe how inventive!), which are a bunch of random phrases now really. Wee! That’s a great thing!

Apart from that, I got in touch with some spammy traffic sellers  (but it’s never enough spam in Russia, is it?) and had free alcohol from SEO Pult =)

Especially bad impression I had from a Google Russia guy. No wonder Google cannot get market share =) He did not know anything.. Like literally nothing. Some girl from the audience asked him about PR sculpting, and he did not know what it was .. Oh geez!

Gonna sleep now. Good night Moscow!

P.S. Radisson SAS in Moscow sucks! Don’t stay there!