Yandex SEO: Your Guide to Ranking on this Search Engine

Are you considering entering the Russian market with your business?

If so, you’ll want to pay close attention to this guide on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Yandex.

While there isn’t a ton of difference between Yandex SEO and Google optimization, there are certain aspects that you’ll want to pay especially close attention to.

By doing so, you can help improve traffic from Russian website visitors and grow your overall sales and brand recognition within the country.

Ready to learn how to optimize your website for Yandex? Let’s get started.

What is Yandex?

Yandex is a very popular search engine in Russia. While residents of the country do have access to Google, most are not proficient in understanding English, which is why they prefer this alternative.

In fact, Yandex has been around since 1993. The name started off as a joke shortening of Yet ANother inDEXer — a reference to the sheer number of search engines coming out at the time.

Since, the platform has expanded to include tons of additional websites including their form of Yandex Mail, Yandex Maps, Yandex Translate, and several others.

Those hoping to gain more customers or a bigger influence in this market should consider Yandex a secondary focus to Google.ru, the Russian version of what we know as Google.

However, like many of the other smaller search engines in the United States, it is important to determine if optimizing specifically for it is worth the extra effort.

After all, Yandex brings new hurdles like language barriers, censorship, and the use of the Cyrillic alphabet into optimizing your page — which is often more work than a lot of brands want to really do.

Why is This Search Engine Relevant Today?

Yandex is relevant today for the fact that it is one of the more popular search engines in Russia.

In fact, it was more popular than Google for a long time. Today that division between the two search sites is about 55% of users preferring Google to 42.5% Yandex.

A third search engine — Mail.ru — comes in at 1.75% of the total market share.

As the country’s eCommerce market starts to grow, more retailers are opting to try to break into this market. Thus, Yandex SEO is important.

Furthermore, the Russian Antimonopoly Service deemed Google’s automatic use of the American search engine too restrictive on Android devices.

Thus, these phones now have an automatic option to switch to Yandex as the primary search website.

Competition is also much lower with Yandex versus Google.ru. 

If you’re one of the first ones in your industry to break into the Russian market, optimizing your website now is a great way to stay ahead of what others are doing.

In case you do encounter an issue along the way, the Yandex search team is incredibly responsive and will likely get back to you much more quickly than you can expect with Google.

If you’re looking to expand your reach to gambling database more customers in this country, that means about a third of search users are already on Yandex.

Why Expand Your Global Website Reach Into Russia?

When it comes to talking about Yandex, it best content marketing tools is important to realize why a company might want to expand its global reach into Russia.

The truth?

The Russian market for eCommerce and other global services is relatively untouched.

Previously, certain restrictions made it europe email extremely tough to sell to customers within the country and surrounding areas like Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and some parts of Ukraine.

Now, around 81% of the entire population makes an online purchase at least once a month. Based on statistics, that number is only expected to climb.

Considering Russia has the fifth-largest gross domestic product in the world, it is easy to see what companies around the globe are looking to jump into the marketplace.