How to Improve Behavioral Factors and Whether They Should Be Artificially Boosted
Behavioral factors refer to information about how users behave on the internet. These data influence a website’s ranking in search results.
What are behavioral ranking factors for a website?
Let’s take a closer look at what behavioral factors are and the types that exist.
Today, these metrics play a crucial role in website ranking. While internal and external parameters can be adjusted, such as optimizing content or placing links, user behavior and impressions directly depend on the site's usability and quality.
Behavioral ranking factors analyze user actions on a website and their interactions with search results. They reflect the site's relevance and influence its position in search engines. Yandex and Google evaluate the importance of these indicators differently.
Main types of behavioral factors
External behavioral factors, or click-based factors, are related to analyzing user behavior at the stage of selecting a page in a search engine. Search engines take into account the following:
- CTR (click-through rate) – the ratio of clicks to impressions. This metric shows how much a query attracts user attention. In Yandex.Webmaster and Google Search Console, it is possible to identify queries with good rankings but low clickability. The first result in search typically receives an average CTR of 31%, while the fifth result gets only 9%.
Transitions between search engines – an analysis of whether a user continues searching for information on another search service.
Last click – if a user finds the answers they need on a site and stops searching further, this indicates a high-quality resource. This is one of the most important indicators.
Single transition per query – if a user does not return to the search after visiting a site, this suggests the site is relevant to the query.
Average number of transitions per query – shows how often users explore different results for a specific topic.
Return to search results – if a user quickly returns to search, it may indicate that the site does not meet their expectations.
Time before transitioning to a site – the speed at which a user clicks on a link also plays a role.
Internal behavioral factors are actions that visitors take within a website. These factors help evaluate how well a resource meets the audience's expectations.
- Bounce rate. Search engines interpret the concept of bounce differently. In Yandex, a bounce is recorded if a user leaves the site within 15 seconds. In Google Analytics, a bounce (bounce rate) is recorded if a user enters a page and leaves it without any interactions, and the time spent on the page does not affect the calculation. A high bounce rate can indicate that the site does not match the query or has poor content. Main causes include inconvenient design, irrelevant content, a confusing structure, lack of delivery or payment information, and high prices. It should also be noted that for landing pages, the bounce rate in Google Analytics always reaches 100%, which should not be considered a problem.
For more details on how bounce rate works, read the article: Bounce Rate: Why Users Leave Your Site.
Sharing content on social media. If users actively post links to the site and quote its materials, this serves as a signal of its usefulness and increases trust from search engines.
Page depth. This metric reflects the number of pages a person opens in one visit. The more pages viewed, the higher the depth. However, if the user quickly moves between pages and spends little time on them, it could indicate navigation difficulties. An effective way to increase page depth is to use internal linking. However, users should not be forced to navigate to other pages just to continue reading, as this could lead to frustration.
Time on site. This indicates how much time a user spends on the resource in one visit. In general, the longer a person stays, the more useful the site seems to search engines. However, for some topics, a short time spent is normal. For example, on dictionary websites, people do not usually spend much time.
Direct visits. When visitors come to the site via bookmarks or manually enter the URL, this indicates the site's popularity and value, which positively affects its ranking.
How to analyze website behavioral factors
The parameters can vary significantly depending on the website's topic, type, and the analytical system used. Since there is no single standard, it is essential to regularly track the dynamics of metrics and compare them with those of competitors and industry leaders.
Behavioral metrics play an important role in SEO optimization. They account for about 25% of the overall impact, second only to the semantic core and content usefulness, which account for about 45%. Link mass is valued at around 20%, and the remaining 10% is distributed among many less significant factors. However, prioritizing the improvement of behavioral factors can lead to significant traffic growth, often exceeding 20%.
How user behavior on the site is analyzed:
Using analytical tools. Many website owners use tools like Google Analytics to track statistics and analyze user actions. This data is also accessible to search engines. To analyze the website's performance, Google recommends using comparative analysis. The service provides reports with data from various industries. These reports allow comparisons of metrics such as page depth and average session duration against industry averages.
Through browsers. Yandex uses Yandex.Browser, and Google uses Chrome to collect data on user actions.
Through various applications. Mobile apps and third-party services can serve as sources of additional data on user interaction with the website.
Improving behavioral factors on the website
Let's consider how website promotion works through behavioral factors. The most popular methods include optimizing snippets, improving website usability, increasing content relevance to queries, and speeding up page load times.
Improving snippets:
Working on snippets not only helps improve behavioral factors but also increases traffic to the website. The following approaches can be used:
Engaging headlines. It's important to create a headline that grabs the user's attention and encourages them to click through to the site. However, the headline must remain relevant to the query, as irrelevant headlines can lead to a high bounce rate.
Visual elements. To make the snippet stand out, you can use unconventional formatting, such as icons, emojis, or highlighted keywords in the Title and Description. However, be careful not to overuse emojis.
Rich snippets. Using elements like breadcrumbs and microdata helps make the snippet more noticeable. However, the effectiveness of expanded snippets remains controversial. Some studies show a slight increase in CTR, while others suggest that they may decrease click-through rates, as users get the necessary information directly from the snippet without visiting the website.
Example of a rich snippet
For more details on how breadcrumbs work, read the article: Breadcrumb Navigation: Notion, Why Needed, Types, and How to Create.
Convenient structure
The website's structure should be logical and intuitive for the user. Ideally, a person should be able to achieve their goal within three clicks.
Attractive and functional design. The website's design should be not only aesthetically pleasing but also easy to navigate, allowing the user to focus on the content without distractions.
Interactive elements. Adding clickable elements, such as internal links, breadcrumbs, quizzes, or recommendations, helps increase page views and time spent on the website. In e-commerce sites, blocks with recommended products can be placed.
It is also recommended to implement useful features on the website, such as calculators, surveys, or discussion sections. These elements can attract users' attention and keep them on the site longer.
Working on content
Yandex and Google algorithms are designed to show users pages that best match their queries. To make content as relevant as possible, the following methods should be used:
Keyword clusters. Optimizing a page for a specific set of queries allows it to appear for key phrases that are truly relevant. This helps make the page more useful for the user, excluding unnecessary information.
Detailed information. The more useful information you provide, the higher the chance that the user will stay on the page rather than leaving to search for an answer elsewhere. This can also increase sales, as people are more likely to purchase when they have complete information about the product.
Website loading speed
Page loading speed plays a significant role not only in ranking but also in retaining users. If the website takes too long to load, it is likely that the visitor will just leave.
You can speed up the loading process with the following methods:
Mobile adaptation. Today, nearly half of internet traffic comes from smartphones. If the website is inconvenient for mobile users or loads too slowly, they may simply close it.
Using lightweight pages. The AMP format is specifically designed for fast content display on mobile devices or when internet speed is low. This helps retain the audience even with a slow connection.
Manipulating behavioral factors: is it worth it?
Artificially manipulating user behavior to improve behavioral metrics is possible, but it is considered a "black hat" SEO practice. Search engines continuously improve their algorithms to detect and prevent such manipulations.
Read more about "black hat" SEO methods in the article: Black Hat SEO: How to Quickly Boost Your Site’s Ranking (and Get Banned).
Even if it is possible to temporarily improve the website's rankings using these methods, the lack of quality content will negatively impact the experience of real users. They will not find the information they need, leading to an increase in bounce rates and poor behavioral metrics. As a result, to maintain the rankings, even more manipulation will be required, which will inevitably lead to penalties.
There are platforms where users perform tasks imitating interest in a website. However, such schemes are easily detected due to abnormal user behavior and sudden spikes in popularity.
For manipulating behavioral factors, Yandex can remove a website from its search results for a period of 8 to 12 months.
Conclusion
Behavioral factors in SEO are key indicators that reflect user interaction with a website.
Behavioral website promotion involves comprehensive work with content, usability, and loading speed. Ignoring these factors or attempting to manipulate them can lead to a loss of rankings in search results.
For stable growth, it is essential to focus on the quality of the resource and the interests of the audience.