How much is too much?

The recent statement of Matt Cutts during Pubcon about the possibility of being penalized for having too many ads on the page triggered a lot of discussions among SEOs this week.

Not many know, however, that Yandex made a similar announcement just a few weeks ago.

New Yandex ranking formula

In the beginning of October Yandex incorporated “site usability” into its ranking formula. While usability is a very broad term, Yandex gives some hints that the algorithm change is mainly about ad placement on the page:

“As a first step we learned to detect if ads distract the user or add relevant information and value. The ranking formula now includes several ad-related factors. We detect if the ads prevent the user from viewing the main content, if the ads overlay the content, and if the page containing these ads still interests the user. Resources, where the ads are placed in appropriate way, often rank higher than the ones overloaded with advertizing.”

Sounds very similar to the Google’s announcement, doesn’t it?

Interestingly, shortly after the abovementioned update in Yandex ranking formula, Analyzethis.ru presented a new tool: Intrusive Ads Analyzer.

Intrusive Ads Analyzer - English Interface

The graph displays how ad heavy pages rank on average in different search engines. The numbers on the axis are not actual rankings, but rather coefficients based on analysis of pages ranking for certain search queries. The queries selected for this analysis are mainly Music, Video and Software related, which are probably the most spammy and overloaded with ads categories.

According to this tool, ad heavy sites still rank better in Yandex than in Google.

What does this mean for Yandex SEO?

This change is really nothing new. I see it as a logical development of the recent anti-spam methods introduced by Yandex search team. First they gave a lot of importance to behavioral factors, then implemented a rule against keyword stuffing. The first time Yandex expressed their negative attitude toward pop-ups and pop-unders was already back in 2009.

All they are trying to do is to give the answers that people like, which is a very high priority for them right now as their market share in Russia began to decrease.

What I feel is very likely to be important after this new algorithm change is:

• Amount and type of advertizing on the page
  I assume that pages with pop-up and pop-under ads as well as any kind of banners overlaying the text will be the most obvious candidates for a penalty. I also assume that too  many blocks of AdSense or Yandex.Direct links, especially situated above the fold, will raise a flag too.
• Behavioral factors
  Bounce rate from the page, time spent on the page, etc.
• Site load speed
  This factor was not publicly mentioned anywhere, but I believe it is be one of the basic signals when it comes to usability.
• Quality and amount of content on the page
  Unique content has been always important, and probably will be even more important now. It should not be overloaded with keywords. High keyword density will most likely hurt rand not help.
• Structure of the page
  Yandex is very likely to look at navigation links and where they point, as well as how the content is presented on each page. By this I mean the usage of headers (h1, h2, h3 etc.), tags like <p>, <br> and other ways of formating like <strong>, <i>, font size etc. The bottom line is, the text needs to be readable.

All in all, I think this is not a significant change and it does not imply that the tactics of Yandex SEO needs to be revised. This is just another reminder that websites should be made for the user, and only then optimized for search engines.

Yandex.Direct, the PPC platform of Yandex, has been around since 2001 and is the oldest system of contextual ads in Russia (Google launched AdWords in Russia in 2002). Even though it displays ads to over 22 million people every day and attracts hundreds of new advertizers from Russia and overseas, the user interface is, let’s say, not the most convenient. Managing large PPC campaigns through Yandex web interface is a challenging task. But from now on it will be much easier for all search marketers. Finally Yandex launched a desktop tool for managing Yandex.Direct accounts, similar to those of Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Please meet  Direct Commander!

The tool is available for Windows and Mac, but unfortunately the user interface is in Russia only. The first version of Commander is not as powerful as AdWords Editor, but it provides all the basic options you need for day-to-day PPC optimization. With the help of Direct Commander you can easily:

- Change campaign and ad settings (targeting, budgets, alerts, site exclusion, automated campaign management features such as Autofocus etc.)

- View statistics

- Create, edit and manage ads

- Add, remove and modify keywords

- Manage your presence in Yandex Catalog

- Import data from XLS and CSV files

The interface is very convenient, in my personal opinion. Commander window is divided into 3 panels

1. Campaigns

2. Ads

3. Keywords

The panels can be minimized if needed. I really like the fact that you don’t need to switch between tabs, but can edit the campaign at all levels simultaneously.

Direct Commander window

Of course, since it is the first version, there are a lot of functions that are missing. For example, it is impossible to download campaigns into Excel. Would be also nice to have the Yandex keyword tool (Wordstat) incorporated into the tool.

I am looking forward to more features in Direct Commander, but it’s already a big improvement. The tool is going to be great help to all search engine marketers optimizing for Yandex.

Just a few hours ago Yandex announced that next week they will launch yet another version of their search algorithm! This time the change is aiming at eliminating “over-optimized” content, i.e. texts stuffed with keywords and almost unreadable for the end user due to that.

Yandex recommend the webmasters, who intentionally over-optimized their websites’ content in order to improve positions in the search results, to go through the texts and make them more reader-friendly.

Yandex also promise that penalized for “over-optimization” pages will come back to their old positions once the problem is fixed.

SearchEngines.ru in their coverage of the algorithm stated that already last week one could unusually big chnges in Yandex search results, which probably were related to the first roll-out stage:

* SERP updates for Yandex, as well as the other major search engines, can be monitored using Update Analyzer from Analyzethis.ru. Awesome and very useful tool, when working with SEO for Yandex, since, as I wrote in my earlier posts, Yandex is rolling out big updates on a regular basis.

I would like to remind you once again that Yandex is extremely good at understanding Russian language, its grammar and morphology. If you are using auto-translated or auto-generated content on your Russian version of the website (which is unfortunatelly quite common), you’ve got one week to re-write it in a good language

You can test the new algorithm in action on buki.yandex.ru – Yandex’s sandbox open for everyone’s use.

Only recently Google announced support of so-called Authorship Markup, and at the same time Yandex declared a war against content theft.

In Yandex Search Blog they called all webmasters to Alpha-Test the new tool in Yandex Webmaster Tools kit called “Original Texts”. To be able to participate in this test, you need to have a site with TIC of at least 10.

All you need to do to claim your content authorship in WM tools is to

1. Add a module called “Original texts” in “Site Content” tab.

2. Submit your original content into the tool some time BEFORE publishing it online.

This information is supposed to be used by the algorithm to determine (and consequently rank) the original content (however there is no guarantee that it will be used, say Yandex)

The texts/ articles are recommended to be something between 2000 and 3200 characters long.

It’s too early to say if this new technology will help to make the Internet a fairer place Seems like a challenging task in terms or processing times and server capacity, but time will tell, and for now, thank you Yandex!

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!

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!

In the end of last year Russian SEO society was shaken and excited at the same time by a sudden change or ranking algorithm from Arzamas to Snezhinsk. Snezhinsk came with over 1000 ranking factors and ad a result better spam detection, better dupe content filters and better geo-targeting.

Right now local results are available for 1250 cities in Russia. This basically means that it is easier (or should I say more possible?) for local businesses to rank in their regions for geo-dependent keywords.  Great! Or.. wait!

What do you do if your site got assigned to a wrong region? What to do if you want to rank in several regions? Or if you don’t want to have any regional ties at all? Here are the answers.

Since a couple of weeks there is an interface for managing your website’s regional settings in Yandex Webmaster tools. Go to additional info -> Region in the left navigation menu.

Change of regional settings in Yandex webmaster tools

If you want to change your region, put in a new one (as shown above). You will also need to provide a proof (a URL where relevant info can be found) that your site really belong to this region. It can be, for example, a Contact Us page with a visiting address.

If you do not want to have any regional ties, just tell Yandex so (as shown on the picture above).

If you would like to be assigned to several regions, it gets more complicated. This can be only done if your site is listed in Yandex catalogue (YaCa). In that case you can select up to 7 relevant regions. To be listed in YaCa is not easy however. It is quite similar to DMOZ (i.e. every site needs to be approved manually and not all applicants get in) with the only difference that YaCa also allows paid listings (still the site needs match certain parameters though).

Yandex Webmaster panel is on the way to better usability! Finally the day has come when we can download all backlinks into a file, just like in Google webmaster tools.

To do so you need to activate this feature here (being logged in, of course): http://webmaster.yandex.ru/settings/offline_links.xml.

It will take about a week for Yandex to generate a full list of your backlinks. After that the archived file will be available for download.

You get a zipped .txt file, but you can copy everything to Excel with proper division into columns etc. and then analyze and filter as you like.

Very good and useful feature I was happy to discover!