regional-audit

Regional Audit — Cities, Subdomains, and Satellite Sites

Regional targeting in the Russian-language web is implemented using three mutually incompatible approaches. Half of the resulting problems come from choosing an approach without considering the consequences or from mixing two approaches at once.

Approach	Example	Region in Yandex Webmaster	Cost of a Mistake
Subdomain	msk.example.com	one per host	each city needs its own content
Directory	example.com/msk/	one for the entire website	the city is established only through page text
Satellite site	example-msk.example	its own region, but also its own authority	sites may be grouped as affiliates

The key point people confuse is that directories have one Yandex Webmaster region for the entire domain. You cannot assign Moscow to /msk/ and Saint Petersburg to /spb/. Directories work only through the text on the page. Subdomains are separate hosts, and each host can be assigned its own region.

When to Use It

• A client has “branches throughout Russia,” but traffic comes from only one city.
• Before selecting a regional SEO approach, to avoid rebuilding the structure later.
• When satellite sites exist and you need to determine whether Yandex may group them as affiliates.
• Regional pages exist but do not rank, and the reason is unclear.

Workflow

Step 1. Capture the structure. The tool automatically finds the city switcher on the page:

seohead regions-check --url https://example.com

Step 2. Add what cannot be seen on the page. Satellite sites on separate domains are almost never included in a city switcher, so always supply them manually:

seohead regions-check --url https://example.com --extra "https://example-msk.example/,https://example-spb.example/" --limit 20

Step 3. Read findings. Their order roughly corresponds to severity:

Finding	What It Means
“redirect to the main site”	the region does not actually exist: there is a host but no page
“canonicalized to another host”	the page has removed itself from the index
“noindex on regional pages”	the same outcome, but explicit
“content matches”	cities differ only by address, causing cannibalization
“identical title”	the city is not inserted into the title
“same telephone number in every region”	a signal to Yandex that the branches do not exist
“two approaches at once”	subdomains and directories compete with one another
“on separate domains”	check for affiliate grouping manually