by DavidErickson [1]
*How to Achieve a Success in Runet? Invest in Search Engine
Marketing!*
Many people say that search engines are the future of the business. If
your company is not present on search engine ranking pages, most
probably this will have a major influence on the profits, awareness
and competitiveness. We search for business partners, suppliers and
services in different ways and languages all over the world. These who
are interested in the Eastern Europe market should have necessary
pieces of information how to effectively reach through Internet their
potential customers e.g. in Russia.
This article presents a summary of how the Russian (the fastest
growing population of internauts all over the world according to
comScore World Metrix, Jan 2007) look for information. It also
explains the advantages of a good exposure in search engine listings
in the Russian search engines.
Searching activity in the Russian Internet (known also as Runet) is
concentrated in 4 major search engines. These are:
Yandex.ru – with 48,4% of market share;Google – 28,6%;Rambler.ru
– 15,9%;Mail.ru – 4,7%;
The other players (Yahoo, MSN, Aport, Meta Bot, Alta Vista and others)
take the rest of the market, according to SpyLOG Feb / Mar 2007 stats
- http://gs.spylog.ru/r/?reportId=7&categoryId=1.
*Business promotes itself in Russia*
As a result of intense development of Runet, not only the local SMBs
spend money on PPC campaigns but also both international companies of
the same size as well as big multinational businesses like General
Motors, Nissan, Peugeot, Honda and Sony. In case of these companies,
yearly advertising budget is between .5 mln - .5 mln with up to 50% of
it being spent on search engine advertising in Yandex.ru.
*Search Engine Marketing on the top*
Due to the great interest among advertisers, 2006 expenses on search
engine promotion in the Russian Internet grew by 150% comparing to
year 2005 and reached 0 million. Thus, search engine advertising has
beaten banner advertising (with 0 million spendings) first time ever.
This should be a very important signal for all the companies which
promote themselves online, that SEM activity (a mix of technology and
words which allows to reach now more than 90% of internet users) is an
optimum way of the promotion (Lenta.ru -
http://lenta.ru/news/2007/02/12/advert/).
*Optimum costs of promotion*
The minimum price for a single click (CPC) in Yandex.ru varies from
(depending on the industry) .50 ("stickers") to .00
("refridgerators"). In Begun.ru one can pay .00 ("cash terminals"),
.70 ("sight correction"), .90 ("companies registration") and even .20
for "company closure". The highest prices (.99) are paid for targeted
campaigns which take into account very precise parameters, geolocation
and time restrictions. You can compare this to 50 - 00 prices of one
week banner campaign on popular Russian portals (according to
http://www.context.1ps.ru).
Investing money in paid listings should be then cheaper and
undoubtedly more efficient. When talking about banners, one pays for
impressions, not users' interest measured by clicks and actions
taken on the advertiser's website. The opposite payment model is
assigned to sponsored links – payment is made only for users
interested in products and services who click and visit the website.
*Competition among advertisers*
The highest prices in Yandex.Direct (http://www.direct.yandex.ru) are
related to B2B activity, where just one transaction (no matter if it
is selling a drilling rig or Boeing) per year make a single click with
CPC of .00 affordable. Apart from above-mentioned B2B examples, the
most competitive areas of interest are flats' sale in the modern
block of flats, airplane rentals, Forex stock exchange and building
industry services.
*Why Yandex?*
Coming back to the most important search engine in Russia... Yandex
– not very well organized in late '90s, now is the leader of
search engines in Runet. The company put an emphasis on contextual
advertising and doubled its revenues last year, becoming even stronger
player at the market. The management estimates that this year'
income from search-related advertising should be close to 0 million.
At present, 25 million people use Yandex with 5 million of unique
users every day. On the contrary, tens of thousands of companies
conduct their promotional activity through this search engine. The
constantly growing audience of Yandex makes more advertisers
interested in both search engine optimization (being well exposed in
organic listings) and PPC marketing (paid listings). They seem to make
the right decision as the results come very quickly because of modern
character of Yandex. Since 2005 it has had two advertising systems,
comparable to Google AdWords and AdSense (according to Yandex official
blog - http://company.yandex.ru/blog/).
*Cheap listing better than expensive banner impression*
Lew Glejzer, the director of AdWatsh advertising agency predicts that
expenses on search engine marketing in 2007 will go over 0 million in
total. All innovative companies that think about future take seriously
into account paid listings – adds Dmitrij Wasiljew, Link.ru
director. The banners are becoming more expensive and will probably be
exclusively used by large companies while search engine marketing is
affordable for SMBs as well.
*"Key" keywords*
In order to be completely successful one need to use precisely defined
keywords – the ones which are both relevant to company business
profile and are frequently used by people in queries made in search
engines. The most popular queries between Dec 2006 and Feb 2007 were:
papers (proceedings), desktop wallpapers, horoscope, postcards,
weather, games, news, mp3, proverbs, dates, mobile phones, recipes,
friendships, music, anecdotes, jobs, cars, predictions, sex, erotics,
map of Moscow, chat, samsung d500, kamasutra, flats, photos, nokia,
football, russian radio, lyrics, motorization, porno, pregnancy,
Aeroflot (according to SpyLOG stats -
http://gs.spylog.ru/r/?reportId=8&categoryId=1). Maybe this will be an
inspiration for somebody when planning a PPC campaign on, let's say,
Yandex...
*Who can see the advertisement?*
Most of them are the Russian people – 44.4%, but the advertisement
can be also presented to the Americans (14.5%), Ukrainians (4.7%) and
Germans (3.5%) not to mention others. That is why search engine
marketing in Russia gives the opportunities to reach people from
different parts of the world. When talking about the Russian cities,
there is one strong leader – the capital (Moscow) with 44% and other
cities like Sankt-Petersburg (10.1%) or Jekaterynburg (2.6%),
according to SpyLOG stats (http://gs.spylog.ru/rsu/?categoryId=1).
*What are the benefits of search engine marketing?*
Search engines are responsible for a significant traffic share on
Russian websites. This is the result of good exposure in organic
listings as well as paid listings activity conducted by Russian
companies. The examples below present some traffic statistics on
different sectors in the Runet in Nov 2006 (SpyLog stats
http://gs.spylog.ru/tcu/5/preView/274.html).
Finance
Users monthly: 1 200 000Traffic share:57% - direct visits32% - search
engines11% - other sourcesThe most commonly used keyphrases in this
sector:credits, banks, mortgage, consumer credits, car credits, credit
calculator, credit card
Computers
Users monthly: 1 801 000Traffic share:64% - direct visits29% - search
engines7% - other sourcesThe most commonly used keyphrases in this
sector:notebooks, computers, driver, computer sale, notebook sale,
notebook review, Asus, laptop installment, Dell inspiron 1300, Dell
inspiron 6400
Mobile phones
Users monthly: 1 115 500Traffic share:*47% - search engines*46% -
direct visits7% - other sourcesThe most commonly used keyphrases in
this sector:mobile phones, cellphones, nokia, mobile phones catalogue,
sony ericsson, nokia 8800, mobile phones online sellers, mobile phone
sale, nokia n72
Cars
Users monthly: 1 923 000Traffic share:*44% - search engines*38% -
direct visits18%- other sourcesThe most commonly used keyphrases in
this sector:Mazda, Ford, Nissan, Citroen, Honda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki,
Renault, Ford Focus
Travel
Users monthly: 2 484 900Traffic share:58% - direct visits33% - search
engines9% - other sourcesThe most commonly used keyphrases in this
sector:Turkey, warm countries trips, hotels in Turkey, Egypt, holidays
in Turkey, holidays in Egypt, hotels in Egypt, New Year trips, Greece,
Tunis, Creta.
*Runet + SEM = SUCCESS*
By spending money on search engine marketing in Runet one can create
new opportunities, particularly in the commerce area. The advertising
activity in Russian search engines gives the possibility for all
companies focused on the international trade (both exporters and
importers) to be present on this big market in order to make new
business contacts, agreements and increase the revenues. As usually,
the first ones will be the winners – that is why we strongly
recommend taking into consideration SEM activity in Russia as it may
bring significant profits for almost every company.
Author (LinkedIn profile) is the owner of *Bluerank* - Polish SEM
agency specializing in search engine optimization and paid listings
campaigns for worldwide customers concentrating on the activity in the
Eastern Europe. All the Polish speaking readers are very welcome on
the corporate SEM & SEO blog to share their comments and opinions.
Links:
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[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/56866600@N00/3628138151
http://toponlinemarketingtool.com/?p=1537
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