behavioral factors. Analysis of behavioral factors

Behavioral factors(PF) - these are the factors that users demonstrate on the pages of the site.

But first, let's move away from the main topic and figure out how search engines search for a user-specified query. Let it sound silly, but many uninformed users think that when entering a query into a search string, search engine robots review all Internet pages to match the query. And when such a match is found, it shows such a page in the search results. But this is not really the case. If everything happened exactly as mentioned above, then the search for an answer to the request would not be 3 seconds, but 20-30 minutes, because the number of pages on the network is very large and this number is growing every day.

So how is the search going? The search robot does not refer to the pages themselves when searching, but to a special database that the search engine compiled earlier. Such a database is called an index, it contains pages that are relevant search query. An index is a database that is updated at regular intervals. The update of this database is called an update. There is an update of the site indicators, and there is an update of the issuance, and so, in this case, we are talking about an update of the search engine issuance.

What influences behavioral factors (BF)

1. 1. These are the bounce rates. Bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who leave the site in a given period of time. That is, if a user came to the site, even if it was by request or a direct link, and left it for certain time. Google takes 10-15 seconds to calculate. The reasons for leaving a user can be different. He found the information he was looking for and there was no need to go to other pages. He just didn't like the site, its design or ad saturation. Or maybe poor content, or vice versa, did not find the information you were looking for for the search query

1. 1. CTR- This factor is of great importance. It is usually used for contextual advertising or a banner, and for a site it is defined as the number of targeted visitors for search queries who followed the link from search engines. A kind of clickability of your link. The more clicks on, the more the ad matches the search query, the better the site becomes in terms of search engines

1. 1. Time spent on site. This indicator is directly related to the first and the percentage of failures. Judge for yourself, if the visitor spent little time on the page, then the bounce rate may be higher. But it can be different for sites of different directions, and the weight of this factor can be different. Its importance can never be denied. The longer the user spends, the more interesting your site is for both people and search robots.

1. 1. View Depth. The number of pages viewed per session. This point overlaps with the previous one. The higher the time spent on the site, the more pages of the site he will view. Accordingly, the better the resource becomes in terms of search engines

1. First and last click. This is a click on your site in the search results and they are considered more relevant this request. For example. For a certain request, the user in the issue makes the first click on your site, and then views the rest. It is the site on which the first click was made that search engines consider more relevant to this query. Also, the last viewed page in the search engine results, that is, the last click, is also taken into account.

Behavioral factors and the Yandex search engine

A person enters a query into the search box and wants to get a relevant answer to it. But, since the search engine cannot replace thinking people, it embeds the above criteria of visitor behavior into its algorithm, and thereby forms its own output.

Yandex uses MatrixNet technology. It uses the work of assessors, employees of the company who oversee the issuance. They train search robots to bring the results as close as possible to the relevance of queries. Thanks to such training, the quality of sites has increased several times, and the number of ranking factors has increased. Manual training has led to the fact that the robots themselves can follow users on the page and produce relevant rankings.

1. 1. The first place to collect data is the issuance of a search engine. The more often a site is clicked on, the more relevant it becomes to a given query. So it ranks better

1. 1. Yandex counter - Yandex.Metrica. If you install it, Yandex will collect information about a person's behavior on the page, what he did, where he looked and how long he was on it

1. 1. Yandex Bar browser add-on

1. Installing counters from other developers does not guarantee that they will not leak information

How to improve behavioral factors

1. 1. Make the user stay longer on the site. That is, to force visitors to spend more time on your site with the help of the same linking. But, if you want to keep a user on your site, then you need to keep him longer on a specific page. But how to do it?. If a page is being optimized for a specific request, then it must fully respond to it. If the user came to the page for any request, then he must fully receive an answer to it and the more extended it is, the longer he will remain on the page and on the site

1. 1. Increasing the number of sessions. What does it mean? A session is a sequence of page views by a single visitor on a single site. In other words, this is how many pages one user viewed in one visit. How to increase the number of sessions? An analysis needs to be done. See which pages rank low in search and have high level failures. Having decided on them, you need to put, preferably at the beginning of the article, a link or several links to more interesting articles on the same subject. Thus, the user will be able to switch to a more interesting one without leaving it. He begins to cling to these links, moving from one page to another - increasing the time spent on the site

1. 1. Insert an interesting video into the article. If you place an interesting video, even off topic, in the body of your article, then this can increase the user's stay

1. 1. Improve site usability. Do everything possible for the convenience of visitors

1. 1. Keyword Density. Keyword density should not exceed 4-5%. The higher the density, the higher the likelihood that the site will fall under Yandex filters. If you comply with this percentage, then you can increase the position for the selected query

1. 1. Link building. Each webmaster needs to systematically, slowly increase the reference mass. But, you need to monitor the quality of external links. It is recommended to place natural links or to . But this recommendation may no longer affect the improvement of behavioral factors.

1. 1. Set social media buttons on the page. Where did your visitors come from? It's one thing if it's from search results, and it's another thing if it's from social networks. In particular, Google begins to focus its attention when ranking projects with a developed social component.

1. Snippets optimization. Many people know that the text from the “description” meta tag is used to display the description of the site in the search results. But, Yandex does not always pay attention to this meta tag, and the result will be a link to the site and text from the title "title". In this case, you need to optimize the snippet of your page in such a way as to increase its attractiveness.

Myths of behavioral factors

Why are these factors called behavioral? Because they are based on behavior ordinary people who came to your site from search engines for specific search queries. It is with this definition that the first myth is connected.

Rumor one: the more visitors go to your site for a specific query, the higher the position will be in subsequent issuances.
Basically, it is. After the search engines tightened the fight against purchased links, it became necessary to use new factors to rank sites. And among them preference was given to behavioral ones. Moreover, search engines have everything technical means to collect such factors. In some cases, we ourselves provide them with the opportunity to do this by installing auxiliary software on the site.

Rumor two: Is it true that in the case of collecting behavioral data, we are under the supervision of search engines? What is not openly forbidden is allowed. I think this rule applies in this case. So, it is possible that we are all under the hood of search engines.

And in conclusion, I suggest watching a video that touches on today's topic:

To determine which resources are most relevant to certain queries, search engines take into account many ranking factors: the relevance of the search query to the content of the site, the presence of keywords in the main meta tags and the text of the document, the age and history of the domain, page authority, page loading speed, and others. technical aspects - in total, more than 800 parameters for Yandex and at least 271 for Google.

Let's take a closer look at the factors that arise as a result of the visitor's actions, called behavioral. To determine which sites people like best, search engines collect statistics - which site users bookmarked, how much time they spent on it, how many pages they visited, which sites are most often selected from the search results, and so on.

These factors can be divided into two types:

• Formed in the search results.
• Formed within the site.

External behavioral factors

Clickability

If your site, being lower in the search results than competitors, is clicked more often, this is a signal for the search engine to increase its position in the search results. This is achieved by improving the quality of the snippet - a small piece of text from the page that got into the search results. Since in most cases the title and description meta tags are in its role, improving them, we improve the snippet as well.

This is what snippets look like in search results.

Return to search results

This factor helps in measuring natural rankings. The system calculates how quickly a person returned to the search after visiting the site, and concludes whether he was able to get a response to the request. If there was no return, then the result satisfied him.

Links from social networks and other resources

This behavior of users indicates that the site is interesting to people, so search engines increase it in the search results.

Internal behavioral factors

For each type of site and search query, internal behavioral factors will have an individual set of ideal indicators.
These factors are very important for ranking, but it's hard to say to what extent they affect - search engine algorithms evaluate everything as a whole.

Forming the issue for each type of request, the search engine expects a certain - different for each type - user behavior. For example, if the user is looking for an iron manual specific model, we can conclude that he is interested in getting the result as soon as possible. Yandex and Google in this case expect that people will not browse several pages on the resource in search of an answer, and it is best if it is on the landing page. And if a person enters a request ”beautiful wallpaper on the desktop", then most likely he will study the site and its sections and view a large number of pages.

Bounce rate

This is the percentage of visitors who leave the site from the login page within 15 seconds. There can be many reasons for this: low speed downloads, outdated design, low usability scores, website content not matching the search query, and so on.

For different types site standards will be different. For example, it is perfectly normal if a person went to a blog to read an article, spent enough time reading there, and left after receiving an answer to his question.

View Depth

This indicator shows the number of pages viewed by a visitor in one session. This is an important indicator of the activity and interest of visitors.

If the user visits several pages of the site in one visit, this indicates the overall usefulness of the resource, not only for a given request.

For different types of sites (online store, social network, informational portal) will be considered optimal for different viewing depths. Therefore, it is possible to determine which is the norm for you only in dynamics.

Depth of browsing is closely related to the time spent on the site, and both factors should be considered in conjunction. The more the user visits the pages he is interested in, the more time he will spend on the site. But if he viewed a lot of pages in a short period of time, and the conversion is low, this may indicate incomprehensible navigation and a confusing structure.

Analyze user behavior using Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics: what route they take to a particular page, which ones they stay on, why they don’t reach the landing page (for example, paying for an order).

Placement helps to increase the viewing depth and thereby improve user factors. internal links to pages with additional information on this topic.

Time of stay

It takes into account both the time spent on the site as a whole and the time spent on a particular page. This helps the algorithms to better determine whether each of them matches the user's request.

The more time the user spends on the page, the higher the likelihood that he has studied all the information provided and received the desired answer. For example, if the page has a large amount of textual information, and the user left the site earlier than it takes time to read it, this indicates that the content was not interesting to him.

To increase the time users spend on the site, you need to take care of useful and informative content.

Yandex.Metrica takes into account the difference between the duration of the first and last viewing during one session. In this case, if the visitor opened and did not update the page, the time spent on the site will be considered equal to zero. Also, if the user opened the site, but did not perform any actions for half an hour, and then moved to another page within the site, this will be considered the beginning of a new session (new visit).

In Google Analytics, the average time spent on the site is determined by the ratio of the total duration of stay to the number of sessions. Page activity is taken into account to determine the duration of a single session. If the visitor is idle, the session automatically ends after 30 minutes. As soon as the user is active, the “session end time” parameter is shifted by half an hour.

Google Analytics session example

Return visit

Repeated visits to the site by the same user indicates that the site interested him in the information provided. Very well, if he bookmarked the site.

Attendance

The more a resource is visited for low-frequency queries, the higher its chances of moving into the TOP for high-frequency queries.

Activity

Ultimately, it is important whether the user has achieved the goal or not. Therefore, all other factors should be considered in conjunction with this.

How to improve behavioral factors

Quality content

Filling the site with really interesting and unique content will help attract and interest visitors. Dilute textual information with visual information - photos and infographics. Users respond better to such content and are easier to perceive. And adding a video increases the time spent on the page.

usability

Usability has a direct impact on conversions. Heavy or outdated design, inconvenient navigation and an abundance of pop-ups can turn off the visitor and increase the bounce rate.

Navigation on the site should be intuitive, and its unobtrusive design should correspond to the theme and not interfere with the perception of content. And of course, first of all, it is worthwhile to carry out technical optimization of the site: exclude technical errors, get rid of duplicate pages, work out the structure and so on.

About how to create a convenient and selling site, improve the usability of an existing one and create attractive triggers for increasing conversion at a thematic seminar by Dmitry Shuchalin, speaker of our training center.

Attractive snippet

The snippet is the first thing users see in the search results. Based on it, they determine how the site satisfies their request.
The snippet should briefly reflect the essence of the information posted on the site - you should not write in it about what the user will not find on the page. This will help improve conversions and reduce bounce rates.

What does it mean? Let me explain: every user who searches for something on the Internet performs a series of actions there (on the search results page and on the sites themselves). These can be views of certain pages, clicks on links, transitions to other sites, search returns, query refinements, etc. etc.

By the actions of the user, you can understand whether he found what he was looking for or not, whether the resource was useful to him, or whether he wasted his time. This information important for search engines, because by owning it, they will be able to more accurately identify quality resources and show them in the search results on the first pages.

The behavior of real users is an objective criterion for evaluating the quality of sites. This is, in fact, why behavioral factors have such a big impact on the place of the site in the issue.

What PFs are taken into account by search engines?

PF can be divided into external (behavior on the issuance page, when the user chooses which site to click on) and internal (behavior within the site, when the user views information).

External PF

• Site click-through rate(how many users who saw the site went to it)
• Site Satisfaction(whether the user returned back to the search to supplement the information, or was satisfied with the viewed site and stopped searching)

Internal PF

• Total traffic
• Loyal Users(returns)
• Time spent on site
• Failures(leaving the site in less than 15 seconds)
• View Depth(number of pages viewed)

How do search engines learn about user behavior?

It is easy to get information about external PFs - each search engine analyzes the actions of users in its issuance.

With internal PF a little more complicated. Yandex, for example, receives data on internal PF in the following ways:

• via Yandex.Metrica, if it is installed on the site itself
• through Yandex.Bar applications, if they are installed on the user's PC
• through the Yandex browser, finally, which is also installed by the users themselves

So if suddenly, due to the weak PF of your site, you decide to "bang" your own Yandex.Metrica, then in vain. Search engines will still get data about user behavior. Therefore, it will be more useful to improve these same PFs.

How to influence behavioral factors?

As BFFs gain more and more weight in ranking algorithms, restless SEOs are looking for more and more new ways to influence BFFs. These techniques may be white and fluffy, may be vaguely grey, or may be black. The latter, as a rule, promise the fastest result, but is it worth it ...

Let's look at a few different methods of influencing the PF.

Method 1. Cheat PF with the help of special services.

There are many such services. These are Userator, and Movebo, and WebEffector, and SerpClick, etc. They live quietly in the network, promise a good result and complete security for client sites. Their offers look tempting and really safe. But why, then, after the next update, hundreds of sites fly off their positions? And their owners receive the following letters in response to their requests:

So, in my opinion, cheating PF is too risky a method of promotion. Perhaps it is justified for young, but high-quality sites that are not yet visible. After all, in order to acquire natural PF, they need at least some traffic to start with. But still, isn't it easier to order contextual advertising? Or go a little longer way of natural search promotion than guessing every day: they will catch - they will not catch, they will apply a filter - they will not apply a filter?

Method 2. Improving site usability

And this is just the most legal way to improve the PF. After all, what is usability? This is the convenience of the site for the user. The more convenient the site, the more interesting and useful it is, the more time users will spend on it, the more often they will return and the better the PF of this site will be, the higher the site will be in the search results.

Unfortunately, working on the usability of a site often scares its owners. If the site was originally created by amateurs, then its completion can take a lot of time, effort and money. Sometimes you need to rewrite texts from scratch, sometimes you need to change the entire structure of the site. And just like that, to say right away what is wrong with the site - not everyone can. Even I, who have been working in Internet marketing for more than a year, do not see all the mistakes.

In our company, usability audits are carried out by specialists who, in fact, ate a dog (learned from Steve Krug himself and Sateen). So, if you want your site to be sorted out and given a professional assessment, call or write ... we will agree =)

Method 3. Triggers

This obscure word refers to such marketing techniques that are designed to capture the attention of the user. For example, trust triggers: testimonials, certificates, licenses, references to famous clients, etc. Or triggers of greed: crossed out old prices, gifts with purchase, free bonuses.

Triggers can also include mini-tests that the user passes on the site in order to understand what type of service he needs. Or a pop-up window asking you to stay on the page when leaving the resource. All these and other triggers are aimed at captivating/attracting/delaying/attaching your user to the site.

You yourself probably use triggers on your site. But you just don't know what triggers are =)

Use such techniques, and users will definitely appreciate it, because it makes their life easier. Yes, and sites with triggers are much more interesting than banal text “footcloths” like “We are a young, dynamically developing company with principles ...”

And finally, a couple of examples of successful triggers that work well and significantly improve the PF:

Method 4. Special promotions

In the classical sense, a "promotion" is a kind of event, the purpose of which is to push the user to sell: discounts, gifts, bonuses, etc. The stock in this case refers to the aforementioned triggers.

But now we are talking about something else. I want to draw your attention to promotions, the main goal of which is to make real users take certain actions on your site: view the Nth number of pages, stay on the site for more than 2 minutes, find your site in the search for a specific query, etc.

This is a great way to improve PF. It's not quite white, but it's clearly not black either, so there's nothing to complain about. To make it clear what I mean, I will give 2 examples:

Example 1 In honor of the birthday, company "A" posted 3 gifts on the site: 3 painted gift boxes were "hidden" on the pages of the site. When you click on the image, a window pops up with a promo code for a discount. This was notified to potential customers through a mass e-mail newsletter and in in social networks.

Interested people ran to the site and began to literally “scan” it in search of treasured boxes. The result - the depth of page browsing has increased, and this is a significant PF.

Example 2 Company "B" announced a campaign on social networks for TVs. According to the rules of the action, it was necessary to type in the search the phrase “buy a TV” and find the website of the “B” campaign, no matter what page it was on. Open the site, scroll the page to the very bottom and click on the “get a discount on TV” button there.

The campaign was a great success, and as a result, the click-through rate of the site in the search results for the query “buy a TV” increased tenfold, and with the next Yandex update, the site’s position for this query also increased.

conclusions

Well, that's probably all about the methods of influencing behavioral factors. You can influence them ... and you need to, but you need to do it wisely. The shortest path is not always the right one. And if you have serious long-term plans for your own site, do not be lazy, develop it, fill it with interesting content and special promotions that will not only improve the PF, but also raise interest in your resource in general.

We released new book"Social media content marketing: How to get into the head of subscribers and make them fall in love with your brand."

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Behavioral factors are the actions of visitors on the resource that show the relevance of the site.

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Actions before going to the page are also taken into account. Search engines use them to identify quality sites according to users and promote them to high positions.

Imagine a clothing store. How do buyers behave? Do they pass by with an appraising glance, leave almost immediately, or choose clothes for a long time and leave without buying? Or maybe shopping? Each of these criteria makes it clear to the store owner how effective the promotion is, what interests customers and what repels them.

There are also behavioral factors on the site. Webmasters receive information about the demand for the resource, and PS seek to select useful sites for the convenience of visitors.

Behavioral factors affect site positions, targeted traffic, search engine trust, conversion rates, and other metrics.

Classification of behavioral ranking factors

External behavioral factors

External refers to the user's behavior before going to the page.

Depend on request:

• The ratio of clicks to impressions: how attractive the resource is for visitors.
• Switching to another search engine.
• The first and last transition: the first to the resource that attracted attention, and the second to the one that satisfied all the requirements of the visitor. Perfect when they match.
• The only transition in the issuance.
• The average number of hits per request.
• Average time to failover.

Request independent:

• Target traffic.
• General traffic.
• The number of known resource requests.
• Clicks on all known requests.
• CTR for all search queries relevant to the page.
• Various traffic sources.
• Thematic sections.
• traffic structure.

Internal behavioral factors

If an external factor is triggered, then the internal one is triggered at the same time: the user clicks and goes to the resource. Internals are easier to influence than externals and can be used to drive a project forward.

• View Depth. This is a visitor per session. The value is relative: compared with competitors in the issuance. For webmasters - an indicator of the demand for the project, and the search engine considers the depth when ranking. Directly affects the position in the issue. Depends on the goals of the resource: the depth of browsing social networks will differ from the depth of the informational site, so the parameter is analyzed for certain categories separately. Also affect the functionality and convenience of the resource. Do not boost views with clever tricks: do not split one article and post it on different pages. The visitor does not want to rush around the site, and he will leave the resource. Difficult navigation repels traffic and increases . In addition, if the depth of views is high and the session time is short, then this is just a signal that the user is confused in navigation and has not received an answer to his question. Create proper internal linking - this is a well-known way to increase the depth of views.
• Failures. If one page is visited in one visit, as well as the session duration is less than 15 seconds by default, and the “non-rejection” service event is not detected, then Yandex.Metrica counts the failure. In Google Analytics, bounces are considered for visiting one page during the user's stay on the site. If the resource is one-page, then the indicator is always one hundred percent, and then it is not necessary to take it into account. Page relevancy affects bounces. A high bounce rate reduces conversions. To lower the rate, pay attention to the content of the site. If it is not attractive to people, then effective advertising cannot. Pay special attention to 404 error pages, which can increase bounce rates.
• Visitor actions: a map of the passage through the site, mouse actions, filling out forms, opening links, clicking on ads, and so on.
• Session time. The more time users spend on the page, the better. They get answers to their questions, and the search engine regards the resource as useful and raises it to high positions. You also need to pay attention to navigation: perhaps the user spends a lot of time because he cannot find the answer.

How information about behavioral factors is collected

Behavioral factors are more stable than link factors, so search engines are guided by the visitor's behavior when ranking. The following tools are used to obtain data:

• Attendance counters: Yandex. Metrica and Google Analytics.
  They collect information not only for the optimizer, but also for the relevant search engines: they depersonalize and transfer information for further use.
• Own web browsers.
  Every major PS has a browser: Google Chrome, Yandex, Rambler.Browser. Programs collect information about the interests of users to improve the work of the PS.
• Browser extensions and plugins.
  Yandex offers Yandex.Bar for installation, which, in addition to weather reports, also monitors behavioral factors and uses the results to rank: which sites the user often visits, which ones he leaves, which he returns to.
• Clicks on snippets.
  A lot of clicks from low positions tell search engines about the demand for the material, and they increase positions in search results.
• Services, applications: collection and transmission of location information, processing of user interests.
  Many large sites collect their own statistics.

When a user opens a large number of tabs at the same time from the search results, behavioral factors are either not taken into account or are distributed to a lesser extent.

Cheating behavioral factors

Cheat - the artificial creation of user behavior, refers to the black method of promotion. The principles of work include registration on special services, the choice between robots or real people, and then everything goes well: the factors increase, the site moves to the top.

But search engines quickly notice cheating: robots are distinguished by the similarity of IP addresses, devices, behavior, and real people are calculated by their behavior in search and increased interest in different subject areas. Penalties are imposed upon discovery. Yandex removes the page from the search for up to 10 months.
The site's reputation suffers. Therefore, professionals advise using legal methods to increase behavioral factors: for the benefit of both the site and the user. Let's take a look at these strategies.

How to improve behavioral factors

Initially, the competition is on the pages of search results. How to win in the fight for a visitor? An informative and attractive snippet will help with this. This means that reading short description, the visitor decides to go to the resource, and you must make sure that he comes to you.

How to get attention in SERP:

• Use special HTML characters to present information creatively.
• Highlight key words to reveal the main themes in the material.
• Do not neglect quick links: they take you to internal blocks, and visitors have no problems with navigation.
• Use special tools for webmasters and don't forget about services like Yandex.Market. If you have products on the page, then use the Market to put the price for the product in the snippet. This will increase interest and clickability.

Domestic events

• Create unique content, a nice design that won't distract or hurt your eyes, a proper structure where the user won't get confused in the labyrinth of links. All this makes the site interesting and user-friendly, he will want to stay on the site and continue studying, which will increase the session time, the depth of views. Find broken links, replace them, or come up with a smart 404 page.
• Fill pages with photos, videos, podcasts, games, crossword puzzles, polls: everything that will interest the user and keep him on the page longer. The search engine will receive a signal that the resource is informative and popular, which means it will bring it to high positions. Do home page Relevant, that is, give accurate answers to user questions.
• Optimize site uptime: no one wants to wait a long time if the site takes a long time to load. Fast display of pages will increase the comfort of the visitor. Also, adapt the work of the resource under mobile devices: 60% of requests come from there. Accumulate traffic and behavioral resources.
• Get traffic from different sources: arrivals not from the search also indicate the usefulness of the resource to the PS: users share links on blogs, talk on social networks, which increases behavioral factors.
• work on semantic core: first parse and add low frequency requests, and then proceed to filling mid-frequency and high-frequency requests. This strategy helps with promotion in Yandex.

Behavioral factors are of great importance in the promotion of projects: they select resources, taking advantage of the interests of users, tracking their activity on the search results pages and on the site itself. Improvement of behavioral factors can be achieved without cheating: useful content, understandable structure, relevance of pages to a search query.

What are behavioral ranking factors and how do they affect SEO site optimization in Yandex and Google? Where do search engines get PF data from? List of 26 Behavioral Ranking Factors: How to Improve Them? Is it possible to wind up the PF or pessimize the competitor's website? Read more about everything in this article.

When forming the issue, search engines are guided by, which are used in algorithms for determining the quality of sites and their relevance to search queries. One of the most significant SEO factors are behavioral ranking factors.

What are site behavioral factors?

Behavioral ranking factors- this is a set of parameters that determine the relevance of a page to a search query, based on the actions of site users, their profile and history of interaction with the search. These parameters are used in search ranking algorithms.

Behavioral factors today play an important role in the process of determining the relevance of sites, however, their contribution cannot be quantified. Firstly, search engines do not comment on the information and do not disclose site ranking factors and their weight in the overall ranking formula. Secondly, there are a large number of other factors that also affect the issuance. These can be domain, link, commercial factors, etc.

Behavioral factors reflect the visitor's engagement and interest in the content presented on the page. Modern SEO optimization does not seem effective without working on these indicators, the convenience of interfaces, and the quality of content.

The Impact of Behavioral Factors on SEO

It’s worth starting with the fact that behavioral factors cannot be considered in abstraction from other ranking factors. For example, technical factors such as slow site speed or broken internal links can significantly reduce browsing depth. Server unavailability or unoptimized images for people with unstable internet can be a problem in displaying content on the site, which in turn can increase the bounce rate. Poor quality content, uninteresting text, is likely to provoke the user to go to another site.

The high degree of dependence of user factors on the quality of the site, as well as the complexity of artificially influencing them, made these factors one of the most significant in determining the relevance of the issue. About 10-15 years ago, text and link ranking factors had high priority in search algorithms. The simplicity of their definition has led to artificial markups: mass purchase of external links, re-optimization of texts keywords. Naturally, the influence of these factors decreased, pessimizing ranking algorithms appeared, such as Baden-Baden and Minusinsk, which lowered sites in search results for search engine spam and unnatural link mass.

Since 2014, Yandex has naturally announced an increase in the influence of behavioral ranking factors in determining the relevance of pages, and a corresponding decrease in the influence of external links. The search engine said that the priorities in the updated algorithm, that is, those that have more weight in the overall ranking formula, are behavioral factors that are based primarily on the quality of content, usability and user experience of interaction with the search and the site.

Where do search engines get PF data from?

Before moving on to the list of behavioral ranking factors, let's look at the sources from which search engines draw data on web resources.

1. Analytics systems. Almost every site today has a Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics statistics counter installed. By providing webmasters with a free analytics tool, search engines receive in return a huge amount of data that is used for ranking.
2. Browsers. Search engines spend a lot of money developing and advertising their own browsers for a reason. This is another source of information about the user profile, its interaction with sites, which allows you to make the search better.
3. Browser extensions like Yandex.Bar, they can transmit data to search engines about user interaction with the search.
4. Search engine services. Data from Google Search Console, Google Plus, Yandex.Webmaster, Zen, Directory and other search engine services may be taken into account in determining the relevance of sites.
5. Other software and software, one way or another controlled by search engines. For example, PuntoSwitcher purchased by Yandex can provide search data about user typos. This information can be used in determining the vital vadacha.

Internet memes are already being made about the user experience of interacting with search companies:

As the saying goes, there is some truth in every joke. Modern search engines can approach the formation of a user profile in a personalized way, based on the data of his interaction with all kinds of services and applications.

List: 26 Behavioral Ranking Factors

Consider a list of behavioral ranking factors that today can significantly affect the position of your site in search, both for better and for worse:

Behavioral factors cheating is an artificial imitation of user actions on the site. It is designed to increase the browsing depth, time on the site, reduce the bounce rate and affect other parameters that affect the ranking of sites. To date, optimizers either develop their own software, or use third party services by wrapping PF.

We consider both ways of artificial influence on extradition unpromising. 4-5 years ago, these tools could work, however, later search engines began to be pessimistic, or completely exclude resources from the issuance of such frauds. User factors - in themselves are complex and non-linear indicators, the effectiveness of which strongly depends on the subject, user profile, visit history, type of resource, and many other factors. Objectively, existing services linearly wind up the most available factors in fairly primitive ways that are easy to trace. In the site statistics, the geography of visitors, their devices, IP addresses, the unjustified nature of user behavior on the site, the distribution of attention across pages, etc. change dramatically. Such uncharacteristic changes are easily tracked by modern search engines. Theoretically, it is possible to develop an algorithm as close as possible to the actions of users, however, this will be the result of a security breach on the Internet, the creation of botnets, which can later be used for DDos attacks and other selfish goals of hackers. Search engines rate this threat as search spam and have a negative attitude towards the spread of malware on the Internet.

Here is a comment from a Yandex official from 2016, when the company began to actively fight this type of search spam:

This raises a completely logical question: "How do search engines track the promotion of PF in order to lower the positions of competitors in the search results?". We believe that sanctions for PF cheating are imposed after a long time of use and only manually. In this case, competitors will have to for a long time spend your own money, every day more and more doubting the prospects for attempts to pessimize competitors. Or perhaps suspicious traffic and PF, which search engines consider unnatural, is simply screened out from participation in ranking algorithms. Share your opinion in the comments on this issue.

Here is the official answer from Yandex support. The search engine says that such attempts are taken into account and tracked in the algorithm:

How to improve the behavioral factors on the site?

Instead of trying to artificially influence user factors by imitating user actions, it is better to work on the quality of the project, its content, page speed, usability and other aspects of a modern Internet resource. Let's take a look at a few website optimization options to improve behavioral ranking factors.

We are looking for weak points of the site

The best tool for visually displaying the conversion holes of your site is Webvisor. This tool allows you to view the entire user session in the first person, to understand the nature and motives of his actions. With the help of WebVisor, you can analyze and understand why visitors leave your site, from which pages they leave and after what actions.

Analyze bounces, sessions with low duration and activity, through which users go to your site, browsers and devices. Track the correct display of your site on different resolutions, devices and browsers. Perhaps the biggest bounce rate comes from one browser that doesn't support your code.

Session duration

It makes no sense to purposefully increase the duration of the session, since this factor strongly depends on the subject of the project, its goals and content. However, an increase in the amount of time users spend on your site can signal that users are more engaged with your page's information or product range.

If you consider a commercial site, be sure to add pagination of pages, add the ability to filter the number of products on the page, use product filters, experiment with loading products without reloading the page (Ajax). Display the number of products in a category so that users are aware of the breadth of your range. Provide users with the most complete information about your products: video reviews, photos from various angles, detailed descriptions goods, their characteristics. Try to display important information for users even before switching to the product card.

Information sites can increase user engagement and session time with all sorts of polls on the topic, tests, opinions of experts and celebrities, infographics, useful videos, convenient tables, and high-quality structuring and presentation of content on the page.

There is one very interesting technique for checking the usability and usability of your site. Suggest to your mother or grandmother, who are not advanced users, to find specific page or place an order on your website. By their reaction, it will immediately become clear to you what weak areas your site has from the point of view of users.

View Depth

Work on semantic page linking, navigation and site structure so that users can get to any page in no more than 3 clicks. Offer related content to users based on their interests and the content of the page they are on.

We reduce the bounce rate

We remove aggressive ads and pop-ups from our site that block access to content for the user. Raise the most important content for the user to the top of the page. If this is a product category, the user should immediately see the product items in the visible area of ​​his device. If this informational article, the user does not have to scroll to the middle of the page in the hope of getting to the content, viewing a ton of ads or useless materials.

Check that your website scripts work correctly on all devices and browsers. It is possible that errors in the interpretation of the code by the browser prevent users from accessing content or taking necessary actions.

Development of snippets

Analyze the CTR of your snippets, traffic on individual pages and the position of the site in the SERP in comparison with past indicators. Evaluate the relevance of the information presented in the snippet to the tasks that the user is trying to solve. Do not forget to take into account the seasonality and dynamics of demand for certain key queries.

Work on your site's microdata to get rich snippets. Experiment with using special characters and HTML5 tags in snippet titles and descriptions. See how it will affect your positions and traffic.

We increase user activity

When using "Chat with the company" in the search, promptly and as detailed as possible give users advice.

Try at the end of the article to ask the opinion of your readers on the material presented, perhaps this will increase their involvement in the discussion of a given topic.

Update and update content

This recommendation applies to both commercial and informational sites. In the first case, it is extremely important to maintain the relevance of product balances so that users do not order those products that are no longer in stock. It is also necessary to maintain the relevance of prices, descriptions, graphic materials, so that the product that people see on the site corresponds to it in reality.

For information sites, it is important to keep the data up-to-date, especially in dynamically changing areas. Legal sites with outdated legal information are unlikely to last long in the TOP-e issuance of search engines. As well as a site about SEO optimization, which recommends buying links and cheating user factors, is unlikely to deserve the attention of users.

Irrelevant and not updated content of your resources can negatively affect behavioral factors, engagement and audience loyalty.

Improving interaction with the site

Try to provide users with as much functionality and data as possible to help them solve their problem. For online stores, dimensional grids of goods are a kind of must have. For example, for a developer's site, it will be a big plus to have virtual tour for apartments under construction. For an information site dedicated to diets, it would be a good addition to have a calorie calculator that will help each user calculate their personal indicators and leave a weight loss plan.

Put yourself in the place of users and think about what interactive or functionality you can help them solve their problems, as well as increase conversion or key indicators of your business.

Conclusion

In order to evaluate the behavioral factors of your site, it is not necessary to know all the elements of search algorithms. You already have everything you need to analyze from a human point of view - these are analytics systems. Master new reports, analyze statistics, user behavior on your site, holes due to which users go to competitors. Put yourself in the place of users and ask yourself the question "what do I not like about this site?", attract independent people from your target audience to evaluate the content and usability of your resource.

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