Using Yandex Webmasters for Keyword Research 

Introduction

In addition to the Bing Webmasters, I use Yandex Webmasters as well for my sites and there are certainly reasons for that. We all know that Yandex is Russia’s largest search engine and is used in many other neighbouring countries as well.

Hence when we require traffic for our site irrespective of the Geo then we should definitely consider Yandex. Following are some reasons for that.

Why Should We Use Yandex for Our Sites?

  1. It is a small search engine as compared to Google or Bing/Yahoo/Microsoft. So it is not difficult to rank for a keyword in Yandex.
  2. It still relies on meta tags, meta description and exact match keywords. So, you can easily optimise your article/course/forum for Yandex Search.
  3. Like Bing, Yandex does not throw a site from sky to land (as Google’s Update do). So, if you find relevant keywords to target and start getting traffic, it will increase.
  4. Yandex has far more powerful Backlinks detection algorithms as compared to Google and Bing. So, you can find all the backlinks to your site from yandex, without paying to third party sites like ahrefs and semrush.
  5. You can submit bulk links to Yandex unlike Google. So, manual indexing is easier and faster than Google.

Traffic From Yandex

As I said above, I have been using Yandex for my site since the day I discovered it. Most of my content does not relate to Russia yet I get 30-50 average clicks.

So, on an average I have 1.3k monthly users from Yandex and around 2.5k views a month which is not bad!

Now, the question is, how we can use Yandex for Keyword Resesarch?

Using Yandex for Keyword Research

I assume that you already have your site on Yandex Webmasters and also have submitted your sitemaps.

Go to Yandex Webmasters > Search Queries > Query Statistics > Click “All Queries”

Make the time range of 1 year and from the top, click “Popular Queries” and you will get the list of all the keywords for which your site ranked in Yandex Search Pages.

In the bottom you will get the number of queries for which your site ranked and also an option to download all of them.

Now the game begins!

Arranging Keywords Into Groups

So, now we need to group keywords having similar topic. Once done with that, we will have a clear strategy for creating new content including blog posts/courses/forums.

However most of the times, we have keywords that are in the form of question or require just direct answer. In this situation the best would be to put each of those keywords in Google Search and find the relevant keywords. Use them as forum topics and write answer.

This way, we will use keyword ideas from Yandex, optimise them for Google Search and rank on all the search engines. Moreover you will also come to know what exactly people need in those countries and you will be in a better position to discover new topics for your site.

Using Yandex Search Autocomplete Feature

Like Google & Bing, Yandex also provides autocomplete feature and we can use it to get new keyword ideas.

Even if optimise 10% of our content for Yandex, we can increase our traffic easily and we will be less dependent on Google.

So, these were two powerful ways of doing Keyword Research on Yandex. Always remember that if we depend on google for traffic, a simple update can cause significant effect on the site.

So, for a website owner, it is the best practice to optimise his/her content of Bing & Yandex as well.