In my last post I wrote how important the behavioral factors are for SEO for Yandex. Researching that subject more, I stumbled upon very curious piece of software called “Userator”. This software is supposed to simulate users’ behavior and by that improve your positions in Yandex.

Obviously it is a very spammy thing. Moreover, most probably it is a scam, however one can’t be 100% sure here. Not so long ago Yandex made an official statement (in Russian) that they are aware of these kind of software, consider it being spam and will penalize websites trying to fake CTR and other behavioral factors by using bots. That makes one think that these softwares might actually work, and since Yandex cannot identify which clicks are ”real” and which are ”fake”, they are just trying to scare spammers. Who knows.

The idea of the Userator system is stupid simple. They recruit people, who get paid for installing Userator software on their computers and delivering fake clicks to the sites in the system (done by the software; the owner of the computer has no idea what is happening in the background and can use his/her computer as usually). People get paid for doing nothing = Great! Always works in Russia…

For the clients Userator does the following:

a) Simulates clicks from Yandex/ Google/ Rambler SERPs for desired search queries and ”stays” on the website for a period of time. The length of stay can be configured in the system. This also gave spammers the idea to use Userator to hurt the competitors’ websites by configuring the system to bounce from their pages ranking for the same key terms.

b) Simulates clicks to the client’s website from links on other sites (client’s backlinks), by that ”strengthening” the links and making them more trustworthy. Again, everything here is configurable.

At the moment the Userator thing reports over 6000 client websites (not much) with over 46 000 search queries in use. Clicks are driven to these websites from 2,5k different IPs. The fake users stay on clients’ sites for about 20 minutes on average.

I tried to find reviews or blog entries about using Userator as a part of SEO strategy, but didn’t come across anything sufficient, apart from this happy user, if that was a real user at all (in Russian)…

For all of us these new behavioral factors, unlike links, are something intangible. It is hard to estimate the effect of better CTR and longer average time spent on a site. No one really knows if faking user behavior is worthwhile. I firmly believe it’s useless and will hurt more than help, sooner or later. Quality sites, good content, strong incoming links and usability are the things that are really important for SEO. Having all that, the behavioral factors will come naturally.

Or what do you think?

After the lame talk about SEO for Yandex Andy and Rand gave at SMX, I thought would be good to write something more practical; how it works with Yandex for real.

Recently I wrote a short update on new algorithm and technologies Yandex uses to rank websites, and these are the practical tips on how to optimize for Yandex in the age of Krasnodar, MatrixNet and Spektr.

Yandex SEO is in a way quite similar to Google SEO, but with a twist

Just a couple of years ago, before Snezhinsk, Yandex SERP was quite easy to manipulate. All you needed is links, and everything would do: footers, side bars, sites about dogs, sites about kitchen furniture or plastic windows. All you needed is quantity. Links were easy to get through link brokers like Sape.ru and alikes.

In 2009 Yandex started to tweak their algorithm to get rid of spam and provide their users with good information, just like any other search engine. The algorithm has become very complex and, as they claim, intelligent. The technology behind it is called MatrixNet, which is in essence a technology of machine learning. Yandex learns what people wants and refines the SERPs based on the learnings.

Just like with Google, nobody knows all the factors taken into consideration by Yandex. Just like with Google, there are best practices that work.

Onsite SEO for Yandex

Onsite SEO is very similar to what you would do for Google: content is the king and all that…

- Relevance of the page to the search query: keywords in Title and Meta Description tags; keywords in Meta Keywords tag (does not really help much in my opinion, but some people would argue), keywords in ALT tags for images.

- Content: the content should be unique and of a good quality. It is vital to maintain good grammar, as Yandex is very good with understanding Russian language. Just like with Google, it is important to update the website with fresh content on a regular basis. And lastly, create clusters of pages for similar keywords to strengthen the relevancy.

- Internal linking: Yandex likes internal links in content. Do not rely solely on navigation and footer. Place internal links with optimized anchor texts into the content.

- Site quality: do everything to keep the website healthy. Make sure that there are no broken links, that all pages work and 404 error is configured correctly. Make a good use of your robots.txt. This does not only help Yandex to identify your website as a quality resource, but also provides good user experience for the visitors.

In the latest versions of the algorithm the weight of onsite SEO factors seems to be increasing.

Make sure to not over-optimize the page. Avoid keyword stuffing and thin content. Just like Googel, Yandex does not like that.

Offsite SEO for Yandex (aka link building)

Link building in Russia is a pretty wild and aggressive area. Two years ago I attended an SEO conference in Moscow, where Yandex representative declared from the stage that they are aware of the fact that 90% of all links in RuNet (aka Russian internet) are paid, and that they are going to fight that.

Yet, this year browsing job listings in Moscow I stumbled on a well-paid SEO job in one of the leading Online Marketing agencies in Russia, where one of the main requirements was “profound knowledge of the main link brokers and their features”. Links are being bought openly via link brokers; and it works. I honestly prefer not to use platforms like Sape.ru and have a more personal approach, but nevertheless, what you need to keep in mind doing link building in Russia is:

- Do not get links from low quality sites which are clearly made for the purpose of selling links. It does not really work anymore.

- Do not get links in footers and other spammy areas. That does not work either.

- Aim for on-topic websites, i.e. sites in your vertical. That will help to improve you rankings, build authority and increase TIC (aka Page Rank of Yandex).

- Aim for quality websites: good content, respectful domain age, good number of indexed pages, high TIC, no or very few sold links on the website.

- When getting links via brokers, you are often required to pay for a period of time (e.g. month, year etc.). That is generally not great. Try to get links that will stay on the website forever, e.g. in news and articles. It looks more natural both in terms of placement and stability of link growth.

From my experience, links from newspapers work pretty well. You can either approach their PR people and pay a lot of money to be placed in a good section; or buy articles in some hidden sub-categories via platforms like Miralinks.

- Make sure your links look natural, like they were placed by webmaster and for the readers, and not by SAPE script and for Yandex.

- Some Russian directories are still good, for example Yandex Catalog.

Behavioral factors taken into account by Yandex’s ranking algorithm

With implementation of Matrixnet, behavioral factors has become an important part of optimizing websites for Yandex. The SEO community is uncertain, which metrics Yandex looks at and where they collect the data.

Obviously Yandex has it’s Yandex.Metrika (analytics package, similar to Google Analytics) and Yandex toolbar, but I don’t know if this data can be reliable for them. I couldn’t find any numbers regarding the percentage of sites using Yandex.Metrika. For what I know, Google Analytics is quite popular in Russia.

Many SEOs speculate about behavioral factors, but the most common opinion is that the most important ones are:

- CTR from the SERP

- Average time spent on the page after the click from the SERP

- Bounce rate from the page back to the SERP

So the tips are classic: write compelling titles and descriptions, create interesting content and provide good user experience.

The quality of your SEO efforts, both onsite and offsite, will be rewarded by Yandex with trust and higher rankings!

Today Yandex search team announced that they implemented support for rel=”canonical”.

The explanation what the canonical element is about says :

“Your website might contain pages with different URLs, but very similar or identical content. For example the same page can be accessible at

www.examplesite.ru/pages?id=2
www.examplesite.ru/blog

with the help of rel=”canonical” you can point which page you prefer to have indexed”.

Reading the advanced help section I also learned that Yandex will NOT support cross-domain canonicalization.

Let me remind you that Google introduced canonical tag in 2009. Yandex started to read “nofollow” attribute and already then promised to implement support for rel=”canonical”. Now we’ve got it!

What one can see here is that Yandex is aiming to comply with global standards, which will make life easier for many SEOs!

A few days ago Yandex posted several interesting job openings, including server-side SERP developer and research technician for SERP speed project. Later Anatoliy Orlov (acting Head of Development at Yandex) shared some comments in his private blog.

Apparently, Yandex is changing the technology behind its SERPs, switching from Perl to JavaScript. Anatoliy motivates this decision of Yandex by several reasons. First, writes Anatoliy, the current technology and architecture of the SERP is, although, served it’s purpose well, is outdated and needs to be replaced by a new one, which will make Yandex SERPs faster, better structured and more transparent. Second, most of the modern websites are built with Ajax and switching to JS is just a logical step, as Javascript is already a big part of Yandex SERPs.

This sounds like a very challenging project for Yandex. Also sounds like a challenging project for various rank checkers for Yandex, which will need to crack the new technology and learn to parse the new SERPs.

Russian SEO bloggers speculate about the possible outcome of this new Yandex’s SERP architecture. Some even predict “live updates” and “instant search” like the ones of Google.

Time will tell, but it is definitely an interesting turn.

Some months ago I wrote a post about Yandex and “nofollow” attribute of the <A> tag. Yandex did not, for some obscure reason, read nofollow attribute, so any “nofollowed” link was passing just as much link juice as a direct link in the eyes of Yandex. In order to prevent unwanted links being indexed until now webmasters used tag <noindex> around the piece of code with the link.

Last week however things changed. I did not see any public announcement, but many SEOs noticed that the amount of backlinks in Yandex Webmaster tools dramatically decreased for many websites, and this is because suddenly Yandex started to understand rel=”nofollow”.  A note about that also appeared in Webmaster Help (in Russian).

This will change things for a lot of websites. Forum and blog comments spam, as well as spamming Wikipedia, was very common SEO technique and it worked fairly well in not-so-competitive verticals. SEO forums were full of complaints last week. I find it rather funny. OMG! Now we actually have to work and think to get those good links! =)

All in all, I think Yandex SEO trends follow those of Google, still with a couple of years of delay. The next step towards civilized optimization is going to be taken in the coming months: Yandex announced that they are planning to support rel=”canonical”.

It is a well known trend – people move from searching for keywords to asking questions. The share of keyword questions is increasing every year according to all the major search engines. Last year Wordtracker even introduced a keyword tool dedicated to keyword questions research.

Yandex is not an exception. Accoring to the latest report, 3 out of 100 million searches on Yandex are questions.

About 50% of all questions asked by Yandex audience start with HOW, 17,5% – with WHERE, 8,15% – with WHEN.

Questions can be a great addition to your keyword strategy! While not many people optimize for question, some of them have impressive search volumes!

Unfortunately I have not come across any tool for keyword question research in Russian. The only way top find those great questions is to dig into your own data. Sometimes Yandex Wordstat can give you some hints.

Don’t miss out on a great opportunity to easily get additional traffic to your site!

How much traffic can we potentially get if we rank #1 for this keyword? How much our traffic will increase if we go from position X to position Y for that keyword? Have you ever asked yourself these questions? Whether a keyword is good, whether it is worth focusing on..

When working with Google all we have is Google search volumes, which are often far far away from the real numbers, and the old AOL click distribution model. When it comes to Russian search engines (Yandex, Google, Mail.ru, Rambler), more reliable statistics is available. First of all, Yandex shows actual search volumes for keywords on a monthly basis (only broad match though). Second, there is this fabulous click distribution model I am going to write about.

I heard about this method of estimating Yandex keyword traffic at the Optimization.ru conference in November 2009, but never got to use it until now. I was very impressed, because the results were quite close to the reality.

The traffic estimation method is based on statistics, provided by Liveinternet.ru. Liveinternet.ru is a web counter, which happens to be installed on around 70% of Russian websites. While individual stats are hidden, you can see how many clicks all sites with Liveinternet counter installed receive for a certain keyword on aggregated level. The stats are daily, hence the fluctuations are quite big from day to day, but taking an average values will give you good insights.

Liveinternet counter icon. Usually located in a footer.

One important thing to know: if you are coming from IP outside Russia, you will be automatically redirected to the English page of Liveinternet, which does not have the same features as the Russian one. If you want to use Liveinternet for traffic estimation, switch to the  Russian version (in the top right corner). The Russian interface will look like this:

Russian version of Liveinternet.ru start page

This is not all. Liveinternet also made public their click distribution model. The distribution shows percentages of clicks in total Liveinternet traffic, which websites receive depending on position is SERP. Please note, that the percentages are not CTR from the SERPs and not related to Yandex search volumes in any way.

The Liveinternet distribution looks as follows:

• Position 1 – 12-25%
• Position 2 – 8-20%
• Position 3 – 6-16%
• Position 4 – 5-12%
• Position 5 – 4-12%
• Position 6 – 4-10%
• Position 7 – 3-8%
• Position 8 – 3-6%
• Position 9 – 2-5%
• Position 10 – 1-4%

Example of traffic estimation based on Liveinternet data and click distribution model

Keyword:  дешевые джинсы (cheap jeans). Liveinternet returns the following graphs:

Liveinternet daily click statistics and break down by search engine

Liveinternet statistics shows that “cheap jeans” receives 150 clicks per day on average -> 4500 clicks per month on average. This includes all search engines traffic, ant the traffic is broken down  search engine, which is quite interesting as well.

According to the model, if a website ranks nr 1 for “cheap jeans”, it will receive up to 1125 clicks per month for this keyword. Funny enough, googlers seems to search for cheap jeans more that Yandex users

Yandex is very different from Google, when it comes to stable rankings and updates of search results. It is very important to keep in mind that while Google SERPs are never 100% stable, in Yandex not many changes happen on a daily basis.

This used to be the case with Google before as well, but it is still happening in Yandex. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, every 2 weeks or so Yandex rolls out a big update and the SERPs change noticeably within 1-2 days. Compare the bars on the graph (vertical axis indicates percentage of change in the SERPs):

I would like to introduce you to a great tool to monitor these Yandex updates – Update Analyzer (available in English!). The tool was developed by the biggest Russian SEO company Ashmanov and Partners, which is also famous for organizing of  the main Russian SEO conference Optimization.ru and a big SEM event eTarget.

The tool monitors and quantifies a number of parameters across all search engines used by Russian people, including even smaller ones, such as GoGo and Aport. While I have never figured out how to use Spam level or SEO-pressing, I use the SERP udate analyzer for Yandex on a regular basis.

Keep in mind that during the SERP update sites tend to disappear and reappear in the SERPs. If a strong competitor or yourself is missing from the search results, it is very likely a Yandex SERP update is in progress. Do not freak out. The update takes 1-2 days and after that the SERPs come back to normal. I recommend to check the updates stats every now and then to avoid such stressful situations!

Enjoy!

One of the most frequently asked questions! Multilingual companies often run into trouble when trying to rank in Yandex with a subdomain or subdirectory of their strong .COM site. I heard this question at SEO conferences and from webmaster community.

So if you face problems with Yandex rankings, while your rankings in Google are great, these things are worth checking:

- Yandex does not like automatic redirects (e.g. if you display a certain language version based on visitor’s IP). Yandex has problems indexing such pages.

- Yandex is slower than Google when it comes to new sites and pages. If for Google it takes 1-2 days to index a new page and show it in SERPs, for Yandex it will take at least 1-2 weeks, and the page will not appear high. It can take up to 1-2 months to get a new page to the top 10, even when the competition is low.

- Google is better with finding and indexing pages, especially when it comes to big sites with complicated linking structure. The situation when Yandex sees 1000 pages of your website and Google sees 2500 is not uncommon.

- Yandex and Google index Flash and Java script in a different way. I have no experience with this, but it is a common knowledge and it can cause ranking problems.

- You choose to create language versions as subdomains or subdirectoris counting that they will receive a lot of strength from the .COM site, right? PR will flow and it will be easier to rank. Right. But your .COM site is not an authority for Yandex (in most cases, anyway). It is not indexed properly, does not have TIC (thematic index of citation), therefore no credit will be received and it will be much harder to get rankings in Yandex then it Google.

- To rank in Yandex you need links from sites in Russian. While backlinks in English might help a German site to rank in Google, in Russia this will not happen. We are dealing with Yandex, a local search engine with a limited ability to index and evaluate foreign sites. So no cheating here! Want Yandex rankings – get Russian links.

There are many more small things that can result in big differences between Google and Yandex rankings. I will be returning to this topic in the coming posts.

Have to tell you guys from the beginning that none of my clients was even penalized or banned from Yandex. I had problems with particular pages a couple of times, but never with an entire website. But since it is an important thing to know and I get many questions related to Yandex penalties, I will write about the most common cases, which my fellow webmasters have been facing.

In my personal opinion, if your website is relatively old (3-4 years) and full of good content, it is very hard to get penalized by Yandex. After the recent changes in its search algorithm, Yandex started to push up brands and big highly trusted sites and at the same time newly born websites get into trouble much more than before.

Here is the list of the most common Yandex search filters. Please feel free to add more to the list!

- AGS-30 (or older version AGS-17)
Automated filter against bad quality websites (mostly applied to websites created for selling links without any value to Internet users).  When this filter is applied, most of the pages of the site get banned from Yandex (according to the SEO community about 10 pages are usually left).

The name of this filter comes from a Russian machine gun, which looks like this =)

Existence of this filter was announced by Yandex itself on their corporate blog.

- Link spam
Penalty for selling link. Can be applied to a single link (i.e. links are discarded and do not pass any value), single page (page is banned from Yandex) or the whole site (the whole site banned from Yandex).

- Keyword stuffing
Extremely high keyword density. Pages get banned from Yandex.

- Malicious java redirects

- Duplicate content

Pages with copied or badly re-written content get banned completely or lowered in the SERPs.

Yandex has been always very good with understanding Russian language and its linguistics. I believe that it is one of the reasons why it is dominating over Google in Russia. Even though Yandex SERPs have been historically easier to manipulate, the search results are in many cases much more relevant that those of Google.

In the last months Yandex started to pay more and more attention to content and its quality. The technology of defining the initial source of content was improved significantly and duplicate content penalty has become much more common. Texts with grammar mistakes will never rank high either.

- Sites with pop-under banners are intentionally lowered in Yandex SERPs and carry less or no value as a link source. This was announced by Yandex in their corporate blog some months ago.

- Too little keyword variation in anchor texts of incoming links can cause a penalization, however Yandex is for the moment much more tolerant than Google.

- Unnatural link growth can cause a penalization, although again, Yandex is much more tolerant to this than Google. However, a link from 40 000 pages from a spammy forum will hurt for sure.

Final note. Yandex massively updates SERPs more or less every second week. During these updates it is quite common that some sites disapper and reappear in the SERPs. Do not panic if this happens. It is very likely the site will come back to the old positions ithin a couple of days, if you have not done anything dodgy..