When carrying out multilingual SEO techniques and in particular when optimising a Russian site, many factors have to be considered and localisation is key. Whilst approaching languages like French and German you can still apply similar methods, as Google still remains the number one search engine in those countries, however when carrying out a Russian SEO project or Chinese, your efforts require a change in direction, as Google is not the top search engine in those countries.
When optimising your site for the Russian market, your main concern will be to utilise SEO techniques that work for Yandex rather than Google.ru. Over the years Google has been experiencing issues in the Russian market, which has users driven to Yandex that now is a clear market leader with an almost 70% share of the market and continues to be on the rise in Russia.
Now why does Yandex handle the Russian language better than Google? As a fact, it’s not actually the Cyrillic characters that Google has issues dealing with. The challenge lies more within the structure of the Russian language. The critical part lies within the endings of words in Russian. Google did invest in improving in 2008, however, is still lagging behind to date.
What are our top tips for a successful Russian SEO strategy?
Yandex uses machine learning techniques, whereby human assessors judge sites and rate them according to what they think should be in the in the top results. MatrixNet, Yandex’ new method of machine learning, allows for very complex and large ranking factors.
That is why you will have to remember the following when formulating your Russian SEO strategy:
- Have a quality site that looks the part
- Ensure your site has unique and excellent content
- Have good quality links pointing to your site
- Yandex doesn’t “like” paid links; however, realises that paid links will need to be considered at times, so there are not the same bad implications as for Google.
Best way to succeed getting your Russian site above the others, is to look at your competition and create great content, which will attract good quality links and get focus groups together assessing your site’s design and content to be ready for Yandex.
