Yandex progression as a powerful eastern European search engine has been nothing short of phenomenal. With over 60% Russian search market share, optimizing your Russian site to Yandex algorthym is extremely important.Unfortunately, for many companies looking to optimize their sites, Yandex has undergone quite radical ranking updates over the past couple years leaving many myths and now out-dated ideas on how to optimize a Russian site. Here are the top 5 myths… busted!

1. Link building on Yandex is all about paid links

Myth!

Yandex did used to promote paid links and often emphasised this as the difference between themselves and Google. Moreover, large link broker companies such as Sape were set up as a middle man for the purchasing of links for purely SEO reasons.

Updates last year meant the quality of a link has become increasingly important to the ranking algorithm. Whilst buying links is still openly allowed, Yandex have announced that the quality of this link, the relation to your site and also the natural feel of a link will all play a bigger part in 2012 onwards.

We’ve now also learnt that Yandex will actually penalize a site with multiple poor-quality paid links. It seems the future is very much a Google-Panda focus quality link building.

2. Meta-tags are not needed in Yandex

Myth!

From what I know, Yandex have never made any public statements with regards to meta-keywords and meta-description tags. Yandex webmaster places both tags inside content guidelines so we can assume therefore that they are an important part of Yandex SEO.

Previously, Yandex picked up snippets of your site and used this as a “meta-description” and often this actually produced quite good page descriptions but we have seen more “edited” snippets come into SERPs and so should be optimized. Whilst it probably won’t directly affect rankings, it can aid CTR (leads to better behavioural factors and to better position).

Unlike Google, Yandex has not stated that they ignore meta-keyword tags and it is likely they follow a similar algorithm as Baidu and Bing/Yahoo where the meta-keyword tag is used but will be ignored or even punished if keyword stuffing is found.

3. Social Media plays no part in Yandex ranking

Myth!

Whilst it was originally thought that social media had little influence in ranking, this has changed dramatically with both the link building update and also the inclusion of social links in Yandex snippet.

The first point is obvious and heavily follows Google’s usage of social media – the idea being that social media links highlight a quality link for a relevant product/service/site.

However, the second is more unique to Yandex and is a brand new 2012 update. Links can now appear below organic listings which both creates a stronger looking organic ‘ad’ and also means stronger separation between yourself and other organic users. Social profiles can be placed on homepage or in Yandex Spravochnik (like Google Places). The snippet supports vKontakte, Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter and YouTube.

4. Ad heavy pages penalization is Google only

Myth!

Whilst Yandex has a history of promoting ad pages (particularly if they are advertising through a Yandex ads portal) this is not the case anymore.

Google have announced this month that a new algorithm change looks at your page layout and if the ads above the fold are excessive, your site can be penalized and downgraded in the search results. However, since October, Yandex has been using its “site usability” focus as part of its algorithm. Below is the exact statement for Yandex:

“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. ”

5. Yandex is 5 years behind Google.

Myth! Myth! Myth!

In my business you hear quite often people ask: “how far advanced is Yandex? How far behind is Yandex compared to Google? Google will eventually take over. Right?” and the simple answer is that Yandex is a fantastic search engine in its own right.

It’s SERP pages may be more cluttered and PPC a bit old school (there is no offline editor!) but the SEO algorithm itself is extremely impressive. Below are a couple of interesting updates Yandex launched a long time before Google:

• Local search: before Google pushed its “local search” update, Yandex had been running a very successful city specific search algorithm for quite some time. Even display ads are geographically targeted and this local search strength goes someway to explain the success Yandex has had in a country the size of Russia rather than Google.

• Human touch: last year Google began to use actual human interaction with sites as a ranking tool. Yandex has been doing this for years and it is considered that Google’s “QR update” came straight from Yandex.

• Market Place: Submitting products to Google and allowing users to purchase them through this software seems quite common now. However, Yandex Market Place has been running a similar software for a year or two prior to Google’s product launch.

And it’s likely that Google will follow Yandex in it’s e-commerce ranking formula – part of the new 2012 update (announced by Alexander Sadovskiy – photographed) . E-commerce sites now under-go a stronger ranking system which focuses on trust, design, product selection, price and payment/delivery options. This means that users get results based on not simply good SEO techniques but quality site business techniques too. Great! Now watch out for a Google copy of this later this year!

If you’re targeting Russia, you must focus your efforts and Yandex and appreciate that Yandex is it’s own search engine and many of the rumours you’ve heard are likely to be untrue. Find out more about Yandex SEO online.