Promotion of sites within Yandex regional issuance in 2017
Do you need links when promoting in the regions? How to promote subdomains? What strategy suits the online store? How to submit information to Yandex.Register? The article answers the main questions on promotion in the regions.
Author: Evgeny Shestakov, head of promotion at Rush Agency, a regular participant of the Baltic Digital Days conference, tells how to implement the promotion in the regions in practical terms. Examples, step-by-step instructions, justification - everything you need for your work.
Classification of requests in Yandex. Geo-dependent (further GD) and geo-independent (GI).
Ranking factors in the regions. Which groups of factors work well, and which are not very good.
Strategies for promoting regional extradition - what to choose: subdomains or folders?
Why Yandex?
Unlike Google, in Yandex, georeferencing of the domain and individual documents is of enormous importance. Without a correctly assigned region, you should not count on ranking by geo-dependent competitive queries in your chosen region.
Russia is one of the largest countries in the world and has many regions and subregions (in terms of the search system), the ranking and competition in which can differ drastically.
Geo-dependent requests
These are queries for which search results will differ depending on the region where the query is entered.
Examples:
buy a refrigerator,
order pizza,
Taxi,
Children's orthopedic bags for girls.
Issue on request [buy refrigerator], introduced from Moscow differs from the issue on request [buy a refrigerator], introduced from Vladivostok. In the second example, regional subdomains made by large players specially for Vladivostok are clearly visible.
Geo-independent requests
It should be noted immediately that the vast majority of information and navigation requests are geo-independent. We will only consider transactional (commercial) queries with a toponym (city or geo-referencing directly in the query).
Examples:
buy a refrigerator in Moscow,
order a pizza in Vladivostok,
Taxi Kursk.
Issuance on request [buy a refrigerator in Moscow], introduced from Moscow is very similar to issuance on the same request entered from Vladivostok. The top inside was mixed, but inside the TOP-10 there were the same sites. You can independently verify the requests for geo-dependence by comparing the issuance within different regions.
Oddities and "glitches" in the definition of geo-dependence in Yandex
Obviously, absolutely everything cannot work as it should and is conceived. In particular, there are many "glitches" in determining the geo-dependence of queries:
Obviously, a geo-dependent commercial request without a toponym (according to sound logic it should be just such) can be geo-independent.
A query with an exact indication of a city or another georeference in the query itself may suddenly turn out to be geo-dependent.
Also, some quirks display queries that contain, for example, "online" or other words indicating that the region where the request is entered and the region where the service is provided are not important.
Example: "online loans". The issue is filled with aggregators of microfinance organizations and comparison sites. If you have a lot of queries with such markers in the semantic kernel, I highly recommend checking them for geo-dependence, in order to choose the right strategy for promotion in the regions correctly.
How to minimize errors when checking geo-dependency requests
Try to avoid the most personalization from Yandex: use a browser with a clean cache, cookies and incognito mode.
Check issuance on demand in at least three regions - the more regions you compare, the greater the accuracy and the less chance to make a mistake with the definition of the type of request.
Yandex Ranking Factors in the Regions
Text factors are the main signal for the search in regions.
Well-optimized Title tags: you need the maximum coverage of the most frequent cluster requests, also do not forget about synonyms and re-wording of queries.
The presence of the relevant non-spam header H1. It is enough to have one master cluster key in H1. No need to spam and add to the headline commercial words like: "buy", "price", "inexpensive". Online stores should pay special attention to H1 on the cards of the goods: it is necessary to leave only a significant part of the product name - without unnecessary specifications and articles.
The presence of optimized text. Since the competition in the regions (even in cities with a million population) is much lower than in Moscow, the requirements for the level of text optimization are much lower as well. A text with the entry of the main query and all the words of the frequency requests of the cluster is enough, you do not need to spam! It is also worth noting that online stores should pay attention to the advisability of writing text on category pages to begin with - in some categories the text is contraindicated and can bring down your positions. To find out for sure – to write or not to write, check the TOP and look at competitors or use the available text analyzers (Just Magic or Rush Analytics).
Various tables and lists for resources dedicated to services. In some topics there are elements of layout, so ranking without them is almost impossible. As an example - the usual tablets with prices in the "concrete" topic and a list of works with prices in the "repair of apartments" topic.
The presence of requests in the links to product cards for listings of online stores.
Basically, having worked on these factors, you can already count on a good ranking in the regional issuance.
Correct site structure and distribution of requests
In regions, it is especially important to properly allocate requests to pages from the beginning and build a SEO-oriented site structure. Unlike Moscow, this can be done once and that is it.
Main aspects:
It is important to look at the issuance, separate commercial requests from information and optimize the documents accordingly. For example, inquiries "mascara" and "buy mascara " should be promoted on different pages, since the first request is informative, and the second one is commercial.
By correctly combining queries into one cluster and concentrating the maximum text relevance for each group of requests on a separate page, you can get into the TOP at the time of indexing of the new document. Tag pages and slices for demand guarantee TOP in regions, especially for online stores.
Power BI for SEO - how to conveniently control the visibility of the site
How to use the free tools of Power BI and Google Sheets to build a convenient platform for tracking visibility changes on the collected semantics in the context of categories, subcategories and the site as a whole. It should be understood that in addition to the subdomains of large, well-optimized players and aggregators, many small regional players with weak optimization are represented in the regional tops as well. By making separate pages under certain slices on demand, regional players are easily determined in the issuance in line with the requests you are interested in.
Do you need links in the regions?
Very often representatives of regional projects ask me: "What about links? Where to buy them and how many?" Before answering this question, I would like to remind you that now we are talking exclusively about Yandex.
Even in cities with a population of one million, the competition for sufficiently frequent requests is quite low. Documents in the top may not have links at all. Why should we buy, if others do not? The answer is obvious - there is no need.
Most regional tops are easily conquered with proper internal optimization and the correct allocation of requests. So why should we affect the dynamic reference factors, if there is enough textual relevance? The answer is no reason; we do not need an anchor reference at all.
It is necessary to take into account the fact that Minusinsk, following the regional subdomain, which is pumped by SEO-links, will immediately punish the main domain. Ready to take the risk? Go ahead and take them.
What about the behavioral factors in the regions?
This group of factors begins to make a significant contribution to the ranking only if the search has enough data about the behavior of users. To put it simpler - requests in the ranking of which a great contribution is made by behavioral factors, should have a solid frequency - hundreds and thousands "by quotation marks".
Most requests in the regions have such a small frequency that the influence of behavioral factors on them is simply invisible.
Mass "spam" capturing of regions through subdomains or false addresses will not bring anything good. If you could still assign a lot of regions to your project, where you cannot yet serve customers, or your conditions are not competitive (there is no courier delivery, only mail) - your site will eventually drop in the issuance. Unlike document and query-document factors, for behavioral ones (that are calculated for the entire site (hosted)), the search has enough data to understand that your site does not provide the right services to customers, and they have a negative experience. Think about your customers, not just about traffic.
Based on paragraph 1, the wrap-up of behavioral factors in the regions is devoid of any meaning. Moreover, any attempts to affect behavioral factors by unnatural methods entail very strict sanctions on the part of search engines.
Commercial factors in the regions
For several years, the influence of commercial factors has been increasing in Moscow issuance, while in the regions the situation is the opposite.
The extremely low influence of most commercial factors in regional extradition was noted. Until now, for many frequent and competitive requests, you can see sites of extremely poor quality, but with good, and sometimes spammy, text optimization.
Commercial factors are definitely worthwhile to introduce in the regions, but not for search, yet for users and conversion.
Another argument in favor of commercial factors is to do "in advance". If the influence of this group of factors in the regions increases, you will be ready for this, and your competitors will not.
Strategies for promotion in the regional issuance of Yandex
What is important and what is worth paying special attention to:
Maximum attention to georeference! In case there is no georeference to the desired region - no ranking. Whatever your beautiful structure and internal optimization may be, you will never be ranked by geo-dependent queries in the right region if it is not tied.
You do not need to bind regions in form of "City + Area" and "Region". In the first case, you do not get a good ranking for geo-dependent queries either in the city or in the region. In the second case, you will be ranked only by area, but by not by the city. Most traffic is concentrated in cities. To rank well both in the city and in the region - it is always necessary to connect the district center. For example, to rank both in Ekaterinburg and in the Sverdlovsk region, you need to assign the site to the "Ekaterinburg" region.
You need to correctly choose an exit strategy in the regions - make subdomains or folders. We will discuss this in more detail below.
It is necessary to correctly perform internal optimization for GEO requests, so that they are both well ranked - and not to overfill them.
The strategy of using Yandex.Catalogue WITHOUT SUBDOMAINS
The strategy is meant for projects that are being promoted in no more than 7 regions, and is more suitable for commercial sites and service sites than for online stores.
Pros:
Quickly link regions.
Ease of implementation - you do not need to create subdomains.
Ease of promoting geo-dependent queries.
Cons and limitations:
Very strong restrictions on the promotion of GI requests, since listing of toponyms in metatags and other areas of the document is spam. The cloning of the structure is inevitable.
For online stores, the main structure can be promoted by GI only for one region. To promote GI requests to other regions, you need to completely clone the structure on folders. This technique entails problems with both the indexing of the cloned structure and its ranking.
To assign regions through the Yandex.Catalogue, it is necessary to provide Yandex.Catalogue moderators with documents on renting premises in each of the assigned regions, which also entails certain restrictions.
Recently, the number of regional subdomains in issuance has drastically increased. Large players and aggregators are actively and successfully emerging into the regions using a strategy with subdomains.
Subtlety of strategy implementation:
In the Yandex Catalog we link the 7 priority regions and get the "Russia" region the eighth, the bonus one. Region "Russia" is not strictly tied, it is a "technical" region and you should not spend a useful "slot" on it.
It is best to register a site in the Yandex.Catalogue on an individual. Moderators, when considering an application for the addition of regions, require that the accompanying documents on the leasing of premises in the regions are drawn up for the same legal entity from which the application for adding the site to the Yandex.Catalogue was submitted. In many cases this may not be very convenient. Or very uncomfortable.
If you order rental documents on "popular" forums, ask to make color copies right away! Moderators can easily reject black and white copies of documents!
Yandex.Catalogue - THE KING! It is necessary in each of the assigned regions to add a separate organization to Yandex.Catalogue.
Do not try to fool the moderators of Yandex. Be sure to notify the employees of the call center that they will get a call from Yandex.Research and that they need to confirm that you really have an office in this region and it is really at the address specified in the Directory. If you do not do this, and the moderators will understand everything, then you can always get banned in Yandex.Catalogue and you will have to make subdomains.
For each region on the site there should be a separate page of contacts with relevant meta tags, the title of H1 and embedded via the Yandex Map API.
For each region, you need to buy a local phone and indicate it on the appropriate contact page. The advantage will be a single 8-800 phone.
Be sure to fill out all the fields in the Yandex.Catalogue, including the local number, for each organization!
Promoting GI requests when using a strategy WITHOUT SUBDOMAINS
The GI of the main region is always promoted via main catalog: occurrences of the region name (only the main one) via Title and text.
The GI of the remaining regions is promoted via a separate cluster (effective for commercial sites): the name of the region via the Title, !URL of the folder, H1 and texts.
You can use a good template text with substitution of toponyms in the text and other areas of the document. If you use a template text, all occurrences of queries and the text itself must be consistent and not have "curves" of occurrences and an incorrect word order.
Strategy using SUBDOMAINS
Suitable for projects that are being promoted in more than 7 regions. Ideal for online stores, hypermarkets, aggregators.
Pros:
It is easy enough to bind regions for subdomains.
Unlimited opportunities for promoting both GD and GI requests together.
Easily scales to an unlimited number of regions.
Lately there are more and more regional subdomains in the top, which makes this strategy even more attractive.
Cons:
Labor-intensive and expensive development and support of infrastructure. On large projects, a person in the company is needed to maintain and improve the infrastructure.
It is difficult to track bugs and "breakdowns" in optimization on a large number of subdomains. Scripts break, people make mistakes. Errors are inevitable.
Often the "breakdown" on one subdomain extends to all others, which can lead to catastrophic consequences for organic traffic.
Subtlety of strategy implementation:
The main domain is always bound to the main (starting) region. In very rare cases, it makes sense to change the binding of the primary domain in favor of a more competitive region. These actions can lead to a serious loss of traffic and require a lot of nuances.
The remaining regions are tied according to the principle of "1 sub-domain - 1 region". Regions connect simply through Yandex Webmaster
For each subdomain, an organization is bound to Yandex.Catalogue. IMPORTANT! The organization is connected namely to the subdomain!
Each subdomain creates its own page of contacts with regional telephones, addresses and Yandex Maps. From the contacts page of the main domain, links to the subdomain contact pages are placed.
For each regional subdomain, you need a local phone on the contacts page and in the header / footer of the site. An 8-800 number will be an advantage.
Name of region = name of subdomain. No need to spam, creating subdomains of the fourth level, and even more so the entry of keys, for example, buy-fridges.ekaterinburg.site.ru. This will not give any bonus in the ranking, this is spam, which, most likely, will not be ranked at all.
Advancement of GI requests with a strategy using SUBDOMAINS
Under the GI, the main catalog is promoted, together with the GD requests from the given region.
GI-instructions are required in all areas of the document: Title, Description, H1, in text or other content.
In fact, the promotion of a subdomain is the promotion of a regular site in one region. Simple? - Yes, it is.
Our cases of website promotion in the regions
In general, we bring large Moscow players to the regions, but there are cases with very small sites that wanted to expand their geography.
Promotion of an online clothing store WITHOUT USING SUBDOMAINS in five regions
Traffic growth of 200-300%
Promotion of a site of services WITHOUT USING SUBDOMAINS in seven regions
Growth of traffic - 400%!
Promotion of a hypermarket in 20 regions USING SUBDOMAINS
Traffic growth - 440%
Promotion of a hypermarket in 30+ regions USING SUBDOMAINS
Growth of traffic - 500%
Conclusion
For many businesses, coming to the regions is a great growth point. Moreover, unlike the promotion from scratch, this is not such a difficult task, if everything is done correctly. Over the years, competition in the regions will only grow: local players begin to engage in optimization, aggregators actively make subdomains, new aggregators grow like mushrooms after the rain. So, I recommend that you enter the regions right now and take as much traffic as possible, while it is easy and not very expensive.