SEO Strategy by Site Type¶

Differentiated SEO approaches for e-commerce, service sites, informational sites, and aggregators. Includes traffic forecasting methodology and commercial proposal structure.

Strategy Goals¶

1. Commercial TOP positions - attracting commercial traffic
2. Informational TOP positions - informational + adjacent traffic
3. Traffic from branded queries
4. Traffic from search engine services (Maps, quick answers, suggestions)

Niche Analysis (Required First)¶

• Identify leaders by search presence for your semantic core
• Assess: age, links, traffic, niche coverage, pages count
• Estimate own strengths; adjust strategy
• Without niche analysis = SEO blindfolded

Timing Analysis from Competitors¶

Via Ahrefs/Semrush: when they started, how quickly they grew, how long growth continued. Result: 6-12 month strategy plan.

E-Commerce Strategy¶

Store Size Impact¶

• Small (<500-1000 SKUs): weak SEO potential; commercial factors require assortment depth
• Medium (1,000-10,000 SKUs): strong potential; meaningful semantic work
• Large (10,000+ SKUs): maximum potential; same effort = 5-10x traffic vs medium

Core Requirements¶

• Technical implementation correct (no mass indexation issues)
• Adequate assortment with visible prices
• "Call for price" = no ranking

Primary Growth Lever: Semantic Expansion¶

Key metric: pages per month created and indexed.

1. Exhaustively parse semantic space
2. Create pages for each segment (color, size, brand, feature combinations)
3. Optimize with templates (H1, title auto-generated from category + attribute)
4. Deploy continuously - hundreds to tens of thousands of new pages

Template Optimization¶

• H1: [Category] + [Attribute] -> "Smartphones with 5000mAh battery"
• Title: Buy [category] [attribute] in [city] from [price]
• Track by cluster/group, not individual queries

Structure for Large E-Commerce¶

• Menu: minimum 3 levels (category -> subcategory -> filter)
• Main page: links to all major groups + popular subcategories
• HTML sitemaps: all products in 2 clicks from main page
• All categories, brands, tags as separate SEO pages
• Links to hub pages and homepage (not individual products)

Service Site Strategy¶

Core Difference¶

Semantic space is finite and limited (hundreds to low thousands of pages). Two implications: 1. Semantic work finishes quickly (2-3 months) 2. Growth requires quality improvement, not quantity expansion

Niche Segmentation (Critical)¶

In competitive niches, general "all services" sites cannot compete. Example: not "appliance repair" -> "Samsung washing machine repair in Yekaterinburg".

When to niche: if top-10 shows multiple exact-match domains for target query.

Content Requirements¶

• Rich content per page (not just text + form)
• Visible prices required
• SEO text: 3,000-5,000 characters
• Over 6,000 characters signals informational, not commercial

Growth Cycles After Initial Build¶

After deploying all semantic pages (months 2-3): 1. Macro-hypotheses (obvious): fix H1, title, add prices, reviews 2. Mid-level: improve content structure, trust signals 3. Micro-hypotheses: CTA placement, photo quality, text additions - Success rate: 1-2 out of 10 micro-hypotheses produce measurable improvement

Aggregator Strategy¶

Advantages vs E-Commerce¶

• No assortment limitations (add more suppliers)
• Yandex favors aggregators for breadth of choice
• Can expand to any region or category

Challenges¶

• Crawl budget: must manage which pages robots crawl
• Technical foundation: critical - any error affects thousands of pages

Strategy¶

Same as large e-commerce + geographic dimension: every city creates separate ranking opportunities.

Informational Site Strategy¶

• Content quality must exceed competitors
• Very wide semantics - all LF queries
• Content production at scale
• Work through topic blocks systematically
• Links to individual articles
• Rich formats: guides, comparisons, longform, infographics

New Site Strategy¶

• Start with LF queries
• Fix structure and technical issues first
• Text optimization on all key pages
• Focus on Yandex first (faster results); Google follows
• Light links only
• No link building first 2-3 months

Old Site Strategy¶

• Track positions actively
• Push MF and HF queries
• On-page optimization to close gap to top
• Expand structure if semantic space allows
• Site speed improvement
• Full link strategy (light + heavy)

Yandex vs Google Strategy¶

Yandex Traffic Priorities¶

1. Page creation based on clustering
2. User satisfaction (behavioral)
3. Text optimization
4. Behavioral factors
5. Commercial factors
6. Links

Google Traffic Priorities¶

1. Mobile version
2. Page load speed
3. Micromarkup
4. Google My Business
5. Search Console error fixes
6. Comprehensive long-reads and infinite listings
7. YMYL signals
8. Links

Traffic Forecasting¶

Forecast Formula (via Demand)¶

Traffic = (Sum of impressions x CTR x 1.35) - 20%

CTR by Position Benchmarks¶

If no data: use average 2-6% CTR.

Seasonality¶

Sources: Wordstat history, Metrika, GA, Search Console. Simplified: 15 queries + Wordstat history.

Traffic Cost Metric¶

Traffic cost = Monthly fee / Forecasted traffic

Anti-Patterns¶

1. Expecting fast results (SEO is long-term)
2. Starting with HF queries immediately
3. Big ambitions with small budget
4. Slow implementation (kills results)
5. Relying solely on SEO channel
6. Not closing site from indexation during development

Commercial Proposal Structure¶

1. Current positions and visibility
2. Forecasted result
3. Current optimization assessment
4. Growth points
5. Work plan for 3/6/12 months
6. Traffic cost metric
7. Case studies

Gotchas¶

• Small e-commerce (<500 SKUs) has weak SEO potential - Yandex commercial factors require assortment depth
• Service site semantics finishes in 2-3 months - don't expect ongoing keyword discovery after that
• General service sites lose to niche specialists in competitive SERPs - check top-10 before choosing domain strategy
• Micro-hypothesis success rate is 10-20% - budget for many iterations
• Google follows Yandex by 6-12 months for new sites - plan accordingly
• Traffic forecasting is approximate - present as ranges, not exact numbers

See Also¶

• keyword research semantic core - Semantic collection strategies
• text optimization - Traffic vs positional optimization
• link building strategy - Link strategy by site age
• regional seo - Regional expansion strategies
• seo analytics reporting - KPIs and reporting structure