Today marks the day we’ve published our 100th article (this being 101)!
Since launching the website on January 1st, 2020, we’ve now covered Yandex and Russian search news for a number of months, as well as our coverage of the Yandex algorithm and analytical studies of brands doing well (and not so well) in the Russian SERPs.
Over the first 100 posts, the site articles have had more than 13,000 reads, with traffic being heavily weighted to organic search (65%).
Russian Search News came to me as an idea towards the end of 2019, having worked with a number of websites and companies both in the Russian Federation and outside of the country but looking to optimize for and capture audience share there.
I found that (in terms of SEO resources at least) there wasn’t a lot of noise or coverage for the changes happening with Yandex, published in the English language. To that point, a good proportion of the traffic this site gets comes from Russia, and users translate the content from English to Russian.
Since beginning to put the site together and planning out templates and architecture in November 2019, I “released” the site into the wild on January 1st (by removing the noindex). I then slowly and gradually began to share articles via Twitter, LinkedIn, and VK. You can find out more about the website here.
Popular Articles From The First 100
Below are some of the most popular articles (in terms of reads) from the first 100 published on the website.
- Yandex 2019 Algorithm Updates Summary
- Does Yandex Read Cyrillic & Latin URLs As The Same Or Different?
- Optimizing Your Yandex.Zen Channel To Grow Your Brand
- Is CTR A Ranking Factor For Yandex? (And Can You Influence It?)
- How To Add A Business To Yandex.Maps
- Yandex.Travels Data Shows Popular New Years Destinations
- What Are The 16 Quality Marks In Yandex Search
The Yandex SERP volatility tracker has also been popular for users to visit.
Highlights
Below are some of the highlights from the first 6-months.
SEOFOMO Newsletter
On May 24th, the wonderful Aleyda Solis featured Russian Search News in her amazing weekly SEO email newsletter.
This was then coupled with Twitter interactions, which saw the website get a boost in traffic from social, as well as the first traffic from email.
The Interviews
I’ve been fortunate to have input on a number of my articles from members of Yandex, ranging from representatives to the head of Search.
I’d like to thank the below people for both answering questions, being interviewed, or making it all happen by handling my annoying requests:
- Melissa McDonald
- Elena Pershina
- Anastasia Nazarenko
The Next 100
Over the next 100 posts, I’m aiming to:
- Increase the number of posts being published weekly from 3 to 5 from July
- Introduce guest and special authors
- Introduce a weekly-roundup format… Not sure if I want to do a newsletter, or find a way of doing it
- Increase in the number of video content I’m producing
- Increase the number of industry-level guides and case studies
- Finish the largest* Yandex SEO FAQ
*maybe the largest.
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Thank you for reading!
