While Google has tightened measures against links' buy/sell, Yandex has decided to abandon them at all. Thus, all webmasters and SEO experts have become concerned with a question: "How to promote your website in Yandex?". Lots of people probably remember, that during the IBC Russia conference, Alexander Sadovsky, a Yandex representative, announced, that beginning from 2014 the search engine would no longer focus on the links in its websites' ranking algorithm for commercial queries. This announcement came as a shock to all websites' owners, webmasters and SEO experts. According to Alexander Sadovsky, a series of experiments for websites' ranking excluding links have already been conducted, and the search engine results have not lost their relevance because of it. He also said that only 50 out of 800 algorithm indicators (primarily those connected with the external links) would no longer be taken into account.
Because of these innovations, the owners of commercial websites wonder: how to promote their websites in Yandex?
Passions ran high at SEO forums. Some experts did not believe, that without external links one could get a high quality search engine results. They argued that a lot of new low-quality websites would appear among the TOP, bypassing many really useful resources. Others tried to determine the main factors affecting the search engine results without links. But in any case, everybody agrees, that only high-quality and well-optimized websites will be competitive.
There exist about 750 factors, that are taken into account by Yandex. But from our point of view, there are much less of them (a couple dozen approximately), and the rest of factors are their derivatives. In addition to internal optimization (meta tags, SEO texts and relinking) there are also another tools, that can help to promote the site in Yandex.
SEO Optimization for Yandex
1. Counters
First of all, you need to install Google Analytics and Yandex Metric in order to provide a search engine with a whole scope of behavioral factors of your website visitors. Adjust goals and conversions, that are the most important for you. Keep track of exit points, as well as bounce rates, and try to minimize them.
2. Content
First, you need to fill in your site with high-quality content, namely to ensure the most important information is available to the potential customers:
- Content that should be on the website: addresses of representative offices, phone numbers (+callback), access map, payment conditions and methods of delivery, warranties, customer reviews etc.;
- Content for the product (service): price, brief and detailed technical descriptions, selling (advertising) text, promotions, reviews, ratings, alternative products, photos, videos, tables of comparison, etc.
It is clear, that the technical characteristics of the product will not be unique, that's why you should add your own useful information. This will help to promote your website in Yandex.
3. Usability
- Usable structure of information presentation, which the visitor is looking for, should increase the conversion rate;
- Convenient functionality will stimulate the actions: clicks, registration, purchases;
- Unique eye-catching design will be not only taken into account by the search engine, but will also attract the visitors to your website.
* It is better to order a professional usability audit and do not worry about the behavioral factor. As visitors' activity on the site, as well as conversion rates in the rank, are monitored very actively by search engines now.
4. Links
Yes, links. We think, that only links which are âburiedâ in the archives on pages without traffic are not taken into account by search engines and the links transmitting conversion traffic do bring SEO effect. Therefore, it is necessary to find topical blogs with high traffic and get the blogger to write a brand or product review. As a hint, for example, you can buy a link on the RotaPost exchange for such topical blogs as Liveinternet or Livejournal. But it is necessary to choose only the most authoritative blogs, that have hundreds of shares or reposts (you can check it out by clicking on them and looking at the number of articles' reposts). The link should be in the new topical article. After the article with your link is published, it will receive hundreds of shares among other bloggers. This will increase the number of topical visitors, which will be good for Yandex and will help to promote the website. This also will cause the increase in number of links, that will be good for Google.
You also need to find some topical forums, to add your own comments, and to show your links with a brief recommendation to the forum users accidentally on purpose.
5. Contextual advertising
As practice shows, Yandex decided to get all commercial sites hooked on the contextual advertising, because the biggest amounts of money are involved in the commercial sphere. Why not to take away some piece of work from SEO experts? As it was expected, the increase of corporate profits is observed (Yandex company has announced the financial results of the second quarter of 2014. In the previous reporting period, the consolidated revenues of the Yandex company have increased by 32% compared to the same period of 2013).
But now we are not going to talk about it. Allthough contextual advertising needs a lot of money, but at the same time it is a source of potential customers. And we should not forget about it.
* Let's recall Google briefly: there were cases, when after the active use of Google Ads with considerable daily budget, there was a positive trend in the organic search engine results for commercial queries. So, we can assume, that the presence of the site in the contextual advertising is taken into account by Google.
6. Social networks
Search engines have become more attentive to social signals, and even began considering them in their ranking algorithms. Thus, to promote website in Yandex, it is required to keep social media profiles active. You should do the following:
- Add the most popular social media icons to your website;
- Create and actively develop your website's community;
- Find more potential customers;
- Constantly update useful information for your subscribers;
- Put an ad to other topical communities.
This is not a panacea, and not the whole list of additional tools, but they will help to improve your website for both search engines and visitors. Our Drupal website development company hopes this blog post will be useful for you and will help to promote your website in Yandex.
And let SERP be with you!