SEO PROMOTION OF WEBSITES IN YANDEX AND GOOGLE ON YOUR OWN – STEP-BY-STEP PROMOTION INSTRUCTIONS

To promote the site by yourself and independently understand the issue of promotion and promotion (SEO) is a great decision, because even if you later decide to delegate the tasks of promotion in Yandex or Google, it will be easier to communicate with the performer and monitor their progress as you will be “on the same wavelength”.

Pros of independent SEO website promotion in Yandex and Google

1. Cost. Well, of course, the first thing that comes to mind is that you can save money and spend it on other needs – refinement of the site, advertising, etc. A seo-specialist usually charges up from 10`000 to 100`000 rubles per month and more (for the U.S. promotion cost to promote one project is 2.5 – 5 thousand dollars), which depends on the complexity of the project and qualifications of the specialist.
2. Developing new skills. SEO-optimisation is not an easy science and in fact few of the great many become professionals. To become an intermediate level seo-specialist, you will need to learn html-code, the administrative panel of your site engine, usability, and most importantly – learn to analyse the output of search engines.
3. Communicating “on equal footing” with seo-specialists. In case, you do decide to hire a specialist, this knowledge will help you immerse in the topic and you will be able to distinguish a qualified seo-specialist from an amateur and fraudster. Also, you will be able to set proper tasks and assess their fulfilment with competence.

Website promotion: the first stage – choosing a domain name

The best option for SEO domain is the one with the name of the region and the main keyword, for example: windows-new-york, rollers-moscow. As for the domain zone, the best option for Russia (that is, for Yandex) is .ru
Try not to take a domain in spam zones (like .рф). For the USA, the .com zone is still the preferred one

The second stage of SEO promotion – collection of semantic core (keywords research)

The semantic core was covered in detail in previous articles:

• Using Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner.
• Using keyword reports in your Yandex.Metric and Google Search Console

Using semantic kernels of competing sites (Megaindex to help, it is a Russian service, for English-speaking projects I recommend Ahrefs, but you will need a VPN).

After completing the semantic core, sort the queries by frequency. The most convenient way to do this is to use the ALLPOSITION position checker, you can also check your site’s position there:

Or use Ahrefs to check positions (Rank Tracker)

The third stage of SEO promotion is content

The most important thing to focus on in the beginning is the website content, that is, its text. You have probably already chosen the topic for your site and may already have a demo version of it. Now, before deciding on the content, enter your highest-frequency query in the search box and look at the sites in the search engine output. Look at  the length of the texts these sites use. To do this, copy the texts into WORD documents and use the “number of characters” function.

I recommend doing it this way, rather than using third-party services, because with manual analysis you can see what else your competitors use besides texts – info-graphics, photos, video clips, etc. All this should be analysed and applied to your site.

The goal is your website content should be better than that of your competitors in the Top 10 of Yandex and Google

Once you have decided on the content, you need to write the terms of reference for writing texts for the site. When writing it, be guided by common sense, do not set the number of occurrences of keywords (each occurrence should be justified by the idea of the article). Pay attention to the logical construction of articles in competitors: the breakdown into paragraphs, numbering, synonyms, the number of characters in the text. Make sure that the text is as meaningful as possible, give visitors only the most valuable information, search engines appreciate it. Next, you can delegate the task to a copywriter (I use the FIVERR) or write the texts yourself.

General guidelines for informational and corporate websites:

• Text length: minimum 5000 characters
• Uniqueness: 100 per cent
• Number of keyword occurrences: minimum 1, the main thing here is not to overdo it – look at the competitors 
• Subheadings (Important: tag H1 – should occur on the page only once)
• Unique high-quality photos, the more the better (see how many competitors have, ideally highlight each paragraph with a photo)
• In tags H2 (subheadings) try to insert the main keywords you are going to promote the article with.

General guidelines for online shops and commercial sites where there is a sale:

• Length of text: from 500 characters (see competitors from the issue)
• Uniqueness: from 80 per cent

The number of occurrences of keywords: at least 1 (see how many competitors have)

• Highlighting subheadings (Important note: the H1 tag should be used on the page only once)
• The TITLE tag should have the region of the site, but the content of the tag should be different from the H1 tag
• Selling pages – callback order form, address+telephone+operating mode in the header and footer – here, you need to look at competitors’ sites and copy all the selling tricks from them, up to the development of the Calculator.
• As for online shops, a common problem is that product specifications are the same everywhere and provided by the manufacturer’s site. Therefore, feel free to place technical specifications of the product on the page, but do not forget to make a unique text description and unique meta tags Tittle, Description and H1. Be sure to make a description of the product and tags different from competitors in the search engine.

Stage four – technical customisation of the website

In accordance with the previous stage of site promotion, you should think about the technical setup of the site. To do this:

1. Add the site to Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console.
2. If after adding you received a notification of errors on the site, fix them yourself or ask the programmer.
3. Be sure to assign the regionality of the site through these panels.
4. Check the site using the technical audit services – pr-cy. ru, saitreport.ru and others (I recommend – Seranking service for tech.audia)
5. Check the loading speed of the site in PageSpeed InsightsObviously create a correct file ROBOTS.TXT, SITEMAP, buy a certificate https, and configure all redirects – from www to a site without www, from http to a site with https. This is the minimum technical requirements.

Stage five – building link mass (especially important for promoting sites on Google)

I DO NOT recommend to buy links by yourself. In most cases, self-purchase will cause sanctions in the search engine, and as they are very often have a “lifelong” nature, that is, you will have to change the domain name to remove these sanctions.At the moment Yandex asseses new links to the site rather negatively. But Google still likes them, so it is important to find a balance.Focus on natural links:

• Register accounts in all possible social networks, in the web-site field specify the domain name of your site
• Each time a new post (page, product) appears on the site – make posts indicating the source in the form of a link
• Use paid advertising in Facebook, Instagram, Vkontakte, as it will help you put a link to the site in communities with millions of people
• Analyse the links of competitors (SERPSTAT service), they will tell you where else you can get free links from
• Use crowd-marketing (links in forum posts), it will allow to bring traffic from other sites, which will benefit the position of your site

• Comment on other people’s posts, and include a link to your site  in your profile.

If your site is focused on Google, you can resort to buying links. But you can do it only in small quantities (no more than 10 pcs per month) and only from the most visited sites that you read (or would read yourself). In general, the purchase of links is a very delicate topic, so it is better not to do it yourself.

Step six – contextual advertising

If you have a selling website, you can run Yandex.Direct and Google Ads contextual advertising on it. It will bring loyal visitors to your site, which will create positive behavioural factors in the eyes of search engines, having a good effect on positions. But for this effect, you need to advertise for at least 2 months.

Contextual advertising will help you sell even before the site reaches top positions in search, so you should not neglect this source of attracting new customers.

You can also set up Facebook or VK adverts for your target audience. It will give the first sales (leads) and improve the behavioural factors of the site.

Step seven, the final step – analytics

So, the domain has been selected, the site launched, the link mass is growing, visitors and buyers from contextual advertising are coming. It’s time to start analysing user behaviour on your website. You an do this using WEBVISOR, built into Yandex.Metric. I will note that there are no free analogues of this service in the world.So, go to the “Webvisor” section of Yandex Metric, choose a period of records and see how users behaved on your site: where they went, what they read and what put them off.

Thanks to Webvisor, users themselves will tell you what is wrong with your site. Fix those things on the site that puts off users, and the behavioural factors of your site will improve, which means it will constantly go up in the search engine results.

Website promotion cost in Yandex

If you order promotion in Yandex from a freelancer and agency, the cost will be made up of the following factors:

SEO specialist or agency work – about $1000 per month, depends on the level of competence and demand.

The work of the specialist or agency includes:

1. Development of a long-term promotion strategy, usually for at least 1 year. Analysis of competitors from the top to build a plan of all the work on its basis
2. Keywords research
3. Technical tasks for copywriters
4. Working with backlink mass
5. Search and purchase of dropped domains (domains that have already been used and have backlink mass)
6. Correction of meta-tags and texts of the site
7. Technical audit.

Paid Separately:

• Copywriting (usually around $500)
• Linkbuilding $1,000 – $3,000 per month

Conclusion

At the moment, the ranking factors in Yandex are as follows (the most important ones first):

1. Behavioural+commercial factors
2. Content
3. BackLinks

For Google, the situation is a little different:

1. BackLinks
2. Content
3. Commercial factors
4. Behavioural factors

Behavioural factors are of little importance in Google, with their impact only visible on large sites.

The conclusions are evident: successful promotion in the Russian-speaking Internet requires a properly refined site in terms of usability and customer confidence, creating proper texts and building up the link mass.

Good luck with the promotion!