Yandex, known as the biggest search engine in Russia, has a hold of approximately 57.00% of Russian internet users who turn to the search engine for all of their queries and wonders.

  • In Ukraine, 33% of the population use Yandex.
  • In Belarus, 45% of the population use Yandex.
  • In Kazakhstan, 25% of the population use Yandex.

The platform itself may not have a big stake in what Google has to offer and the popularity of the search engine, however for those companies that want to primarily reach the Russian public and those bordering, Yandex may be a good option for your focus when it comes to SEO campaigns.

How does Yandex SEO differ from Google?

For the most part, when optimising your website for Yandex, you’ll want to follow the usual best practice of ensuring your website has a good loading speed, is appropriately structured and contains the appropriate keywords. We recommend you:

  • Ensure you focus on quality content on your site. Duplicate and low-quality content is penalised.
  • Generate backlinks that are relevant to your niche.
  • Ensure your website loads quickly on both mobile and desktop devices.

Despite this, Yandex has it’s own set of rules and algorithms that don’t distinctly align with Google:

Region SEO is more Important

The biggest difference between Yandex SEO and Google SEO is that Yandex search differ greatly depending on the city the user is in.

Now, Google offers varied searches based on local queries, but Yandex takes it a step further. For example, a user in Moscow who searches for ‘Water bottles for sale’ in their Russian equivalent language, would see a completely different search from someone who searches for ‘Water bottles for sale’ in Saint Petersburg.

Therefore, it’s really important from a Yandex SEO perspective, that you understand what region you’re looking to target and focus your content towards that region.

Getting Indexed takes Longer

Google is really on the trigger when it comes to indexing content, and you can usually expect content to be indexed within 4-5 days depending on how new your site is.

For Yandex, however, you can expect the search engine to take a little longer to find your new pages and index them. Therefore, speeding up the process through submitting sitemaps as part of Yandex’s webmaster is crucial.

Meta Keywords do Matter!

Whilst Google removed the spotlight on Meta Keywords and their impact on page indexing, Yandex oes support meta keyword tags and it’s recommended you use them if you’re looking for your site to get indexed and ranked appropriately.