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How to improve your PF using natural methods. How to improve behavioral factors - the secrets of moving to the TOP How to improve behavioral factors

It has become increasingly difficult to break into the TOP lines of search engines. And all because you don’t know how to improve behavioral factors ranking your site.

I still didn’t know about their such a significant impact on search results.
Cheating behavioral metrics of visitors to your resource leads to sanctions for behavioral factors and a ban for several months.
Or a serious breakthrough in the high frequency and tightening of the tail positions of mid and low frequency search queries.

Your site is considered cool if numerous Internet resources, blogs, forums, and Wikipedia link to it.
Links should only be placed from trusted sites that have not received a ban and are not under a filter. Such sources will produce the highest quality exhaust.
You need to place external links based on your budget (approximately 1500-5000) per month.

7. Use social cues

Optimizing behavioral factors is the topic of social ranking factors.
For the initial stage, leveling up on Twitter accounts is suitable. Of course, they must be indexed, with subscribers, and generally pumped up. Retweets of website pages – good indexing, trust of Yandex and Google.

Output from here: poor indexing - upload the farm to Twitter and create links to your resource there.
To check the number of social signals on a site or separate document You can use the Russian service http://socio.seo-zona.ru.
It is very important to distribute signals evenly throughout the site, especially for online stores and commercial sites.

conclusions

The trend for 2016 is to put maximum effort into design and interesting content!

Monitor Google analytics and adjust actions taken on the site in accordance with the metric values.
Don’t forget that excessive games with link mass and social signals will attract instant sanctions for behavioral factors; getting rid of them is unpleasant and time-consuming.


Please leave a review of the article in the comments, since the cat and I worked on the behavioral ones, put our efforts into writing it and want criticism.

PF is the most obvious trend in modern SEO and a truly fundamental concept in website promotion. Today the situation is like this: you are unlikely to achieve high website traffic if you have poor PF.

The fairly well-known blogger Arbeiten even claims that sites are promoted solely by behavioral factors.

To get the maximum effect from knowing a topic, let’s first determine what it is.

What are behavioral factors

Behavioral factors (abbreviated as PF) are user actions that are taken into account when ranking. That is, it is not necessarily just their actions on your site - what the user does, for example, in search engine results is also taken into account. Another normal definition in the video:

The influence of behavioral ranking factors for promotion is especially high. high frequency queries and to fight on the first pages of search results. That is why you can still advance in low-frequency speakers by registering the key in the title. Or move from 80th to 40th place on request, simply by adjusting the text on the page. And to get the top 3, you need to work on your subject.

Types of PF

PFs are divided into three main groups - click-based, host-based and traffic source.

Clicky

Click-through behaviors are those that occur on search engine results. The three most important ones are:

  • CTR is the click-through rate of your snippet. If the description of your site gets more clicks than the descriptions of competitors, this is taken into account by the search engine as a good sign. Moreover, CTR is calculated only for those sites that have enough traffic. For all others, a conditional CTR (default CTR) is used - it is approximately at the level of 10th place in the search results, so sites without traffic may not spend much time on improving this factor.
  • Last click in the search results. If after visiting your site the user does not return to the search results, there is a high probability that he found the answer from you, which means your site is really good.
  • The only click in the search results. This is generally a 100% hit.

It is debatable whether these factors are equally important for all sites. After all, there is such a thing as casual interest, when the user looks at a lot of sites to pass the time and is not looking for something specific. Agree, this is radically different from the situation when he is looking for a specific product.

PF in Yandex is just part of the Matrixnet algorithm, which has a crucial role in generating search results and takes into account the specifics of the topic. It’s not a fact that if you reduce the bounce rate to zero on your website, it will skyrocket. Maybe in your field, 50% failures are the norm. This is the superiority of Matrixnet over stupid SEOs. Think with your head, get used to the topic, put yourself in the user’s place.

Finally, there is also such a thing as click weight. That is, if a user made 100 clicks in the search results, then, naturally, each of them will be valued much less than one click from a user who clicked only once.

It is possible that Yandex takes into account data that you don’t even think about. For example, switching to another search engine (usually buttons for this action are available under the pagination in the results).

The main way to improve clickable PFs is to work with snippets. The more clicks and visits to the site, the better. Click factors are more powerful and important than others.

Hosts

This takes into account everything that happens on your site. The most important ones here are:

  • Total number of site visitors
  • Bounce Rate
  • Presence of a “core” audience, community
  • Returning Visitors
  • Browsing depth (average number of pages viewed within a session)
  • Time spent on page
  • Average time spent on the site
  • Active actions (filling out forms, comments, etc.)

One way to improve is to increase the site loading speed. You can also read Mikhail Slivinsky or Dmitry Satin in improving host PFs.
Host behavioral ranking factors, as Arthur Latypov said, are taken into account by monomials. That is, the number of failures plus something, and all this is multiplied by the weight indicator (how important this combination of factors is).

Traffic sources

For good ranking results, it is also important that the site does not receive all its traffic from search engines. It should also have a share of direct visits, transitions from bookmarks, from social networks, transitions from links to the site.

And here is an infographic from blogger Seoprofy, whom I also highly rate:



What behavioral factors are taken into account?

Here are the main points:

  • Last click (whether the guest remained on your site, having completed the search session on it, or went to search further, in other “spaces” of the network).
  • Snippet CTR.
  • Browsing depth (how many HTML documents were scrolled through in one session).
  • The percentage of refusals, the so-called bounce rate (time less than 15 seconds on the page is not taken into account by search engines and is considered a refusal).
  • How much time do guests spend on the resource on average?
  • Actions that a person performs on the page (clicks on an advertisement, scrolls, opens links, etc.)
  • Number of direct visits (the more constant the resource has target audience, the better, this is one of the most important influencing factors).
  • Returning visitors.
  • Social signals (if people share material on social networks, this indicates its usefulness and interest; search engines are favorable to such actions).
  • Traffic sources (where users most often come from). Search engines quickly recognize fake, inflated traffic and are able to identify natural traffic.

Where do search engines get information about user actions?

Oh, their toolkit is growing every year. It is thanks to this that it became possible to increase the role of the PF in ranking. Here are the main sources:

  • Your browsers. I even think that it doesn’t matter whether you unchecked the box to send information about your actions - Yandex Browser and Google Chrome they will still analyze you.
  • Search results.
  • Analytics systems Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics.
  • Any additional crap like Yandex Bar.
  • There are also scary stories about how developers of popular software (some kind of mutorrent, for example) are paid to also collect information about user actions and send it to a search engine. Or, let’s say, why did Yandex buy PuntoSwitcher?

Also, to obtain more information about PF, technologies such as Yandex’s “Multi-Armed Bandit” are being launched. Previously, the domestic search engine was limited to shuffling places 9-11 after updates.

How to improve PF?

A trivial piece of advice is to maximally improve the content, usability, design and other aspects of the resource that will allow a person to use the site comfortably. The usefulness of the information presented, its relevance to search phrases, content.

Before you start working on improving the PF, be sure to think about which factors are relevant in this topic and for your resource. And only then start working on them.

One of the best ways analyze PF - order audits on askusers, or hire many editors on text exchanges. Some of them can correct errors in the text, some can write in a reasoned manner whether the text answers the request. They can be hired through microtasks on Turbotext, as Kirill Lakimanov advises: http://www.lucky-seo.com/post/pochemu-moy-sayt-ne-v-tope.

To understand whether your work to improve behavioral factors has had a positive impact, look at site traffic on Google, since the Western search engine evaluates changes much more faster than Yandex. If traffic from Google drops (give it 2 weeks to evaluate), it means you missed the mark, and it’s better to roll back the changes. Yandex, most likely, won’t even have time to figure anything out.

Increasing the duration of the session

To make the user stay on the page longer, you need to give him what he is looking for. To do this, pay special attention to the relevance of the content. There should be no discrepancies between the title displayed in the snippet and the text itself, which the user will see if he follows the link.

This is done like this: take a request and think about what the user wants to get from the page by asking this request. And so with all the keys.

In articles, try to cover topics as deeply as possible, giving maximum answers to hypothetical questions within the framework of the subject being discussed. If you are a specialist in the topic, first make an outline of the article, subheadings, and then expand it.

Try to use such a psychological trick in your articles as asking questions to the reader. This will make him think, scrolling through the answers in his head.

I don’t think that increasing time on page is relevant for online stores.

The structure of the presentation of the material should also be easy to understand: an easy-to-read font, paragraphs in the text, even distribution of images and links throughout the document. All this will allow you to keep your guest longer.

Increasing viewing depth

You can increase the number of pages viewed through high-quality usability, well-placed links and attractive phrases in the content.

Think about it, why do sites like Adme have fantastic browsing depth? Because if you go to an article, then on the page there are links to other articles with such headings that there is simply no choice but to go to these articles.

It is imperative to use cross-cutting blocks, urging users to look, for example, at a selection of the most popular or most commented articles. Navigation links will help people quickly navigate a large article; breadcrumb links will make it easy for the user to go back if the user needs such a need.

Contextual links in articles are of great importance, by clicking on them you can find materials related to the topic and get more answers to your query. At the same time, you need to avoid intrusiveness; all this should look like good advice, and not compulsion to “jump” on other pages.

A special plugin for WordPress YARPP links similar articles together and has a great effect on PF. There are also plugins that, when a visitor scrolls through an article, will organize a pop-up window advising him similar post to view.

Reducing the number of refusals

Some of the main reasons for failures are advertising plugins that “jump out” on half the page and too slow document loading speed. Nobody likes it when, when entering a website, you are bombarded with an annoying banner that is far from the search query; Most people immediately close such a page.

The modern user does not like to wait. Therefore, first of all, you need to take care of high-quality hosting and clean code so that the pages load quickly. Do not clutter the document with heavy widgets or images.

Oh, and by the way. Don't forget about working on the mobile version of the site.

Users also leave when they do not find answers to their questions within a few seconds. Of course, no one will have time to read the text in a few seconds, but people have learned to scan it, and if in a couple of moments the eyes do not catch on to attractive phrases, then attention is lost. Therefore, it is important to present the material in a structured manner, make more subheadings, highlight interesting points, meaningful phrases and deeply reveal the topic. The presence of pictures, photographs, other images and videos only helps to attract the attention of the guest.

Remove from view everything that can irritate, use harmonious colors in design, present articles in a “beautiful” structure, emphasize interesting places, use psychological techniques to build attractive headlines and then the rejection of views will decrease.

Actually, here's another very good video on promotion by behavioral factors from Dmitry Sevalnev and Artur Latypov - these are some of the leading SEO specialists.

Control of snippets based on requests

When making a request to a search engine, a person receives results consisting of website page titles and short announcements - snippets. In the top places are resources that, in the opinion of the search engine, answer the question more accurately than others. But this is just the machine's opinion. A real person may have a different opinion. Reading the snippets, he may decide that the page in 7th place better matches his request and will go to it, and not to the 1st or 2nd site. And if more and more users do this, then the robot will understand in its analyzes that this resource is more relevant to certain requests, and will raise it to the TOP.

It is necessary to control snippets so that they look more attractive and inviting. To do this, you need to write down the Description well (PS, especially Google, sometimes take information from it for the announcement) and check what the snippet looks like keywords after re-indexing the page and text update. If the bot has generated a not very successful passage, you can correct the text in the place where it was taken from in the snippet.

An online store also requires setting up rich snippets.

Of course, the click-through rate in search results is also influenced by the favicon, domain name, and URL.

Create a newsletter

Use links

Leave links to your site on forums, in comments on other sites, in social network groups. Regarding links, remember the iron rule - only those links that have clicks work. If there are no transitions, these links are useless.

Ask readers to share comments

Update content frequently

Add new materials - the higher the constant traffic, the more often you should update the content. Don't forget that articles should be useful and interesting.

Offer something to users

These could be some gifts, for example, in the form of a free book that the user can receive for certain actions, or a link to a useful video within the topic that is not available in normal mode. In short, give something to the visitor in exchange for his little effort. A person is always pleased to receive gifts, even if they seem insignificant. This will only show that you value the attention of your guests and are ready to provide something more than just quality material.

How to do PF analysis?

The most convenient, popular and accurate statistics services are Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics. Firstly, they are free - just register with them, add the code to your site, and you can use all the features. Secondly, they have many other useful analysis tools.

Metrics - which PFs we pay attention to first

I prefer to track user behavior through Yandex Metrica. Because, firstly, Google Analytics assigns your sites a single identifier, through which you can burn down sites of the same owner, and secondly, the Yandex product is simply much more convenient.

Arbeiten wrote that for commercial sites the indicator should not be 12% or more, and for informational sites - 13% or more. He advises raising it to 7 and 8 percent, respectively. Here I can only add that these are very general figures, and in general it depends on the topic. You must always think with your own head. For example, for informational sites, the time spent by the user on the page is very important - it would be better if it was at least 2 minutes.

By the way, try using Metrica to weed out all the pages on your article where the user spends the least time. Most likely, these will be articles that drag your site down. Also look at which requests have a high percentage of refusals - it is better to remake the content for them.

Webvisor can provide the most basic and sometimes unexpected data. Google has no analogue to this service. Make it a rule to devote 40 minutes every day to studying Webvisor data - and soon you will not imagine how you promoted your site without it.

Another important factor that blogger Arbeiten discussed is regular visitors. You can’t just look at it in Metrica, because the number of “returners” also includes visitors who simply visited your site again - maybe through a link or an advertisement, they did not set a goal to visit your site specifically. And by constant, we mean exactly those who are consciously looking for you. Direct visits also do not always mean regular visitors, since this also includes clicks on links from Skype, from pdf files, and so on. That is, you won’t just find out the number of regular visitors through Metrica. Arbeiten suggested selecting in Webvisor those visitors who have more than 10 visits in history:

And to cut off robots and those who come from the search, you can tighten the filters:

And then you will get your regular audience “without any admixtures”.

All this data will allow us to evaluate overall quality the entire site. But if we are talking about promoting a specific page, then all these indicators must be looked at in relation to it.

Today we will talk about behavioral factors. Yandex search robots consider this parameter a priority when ranking. Do you want to improve it and advance in your search? Then this is the place for you.

List of behavioral factors

Bounce rate

In fact, this means refusing to view the site. It looks like this: a visitor visits the site, but from the first seconds realizes that he is in the wrong place. He sees that the content of the page does not correspond to the query that he entered in the search bar or, in scientific terms, is irrelevant to him. In addition, the user may leave the resource due to a bad, inconvenient menu and similar factors. Small font, poor-resolution images, and even poorly chosen colors can lead to rejection. Even if the content is good, a person will not bother and will look for something more convenient.

Example:

The visitor came to the site by request “”. His goal is to find a platform to create. But instead he sees articles on the site about how to do this. A person is not interested in this; he already has the information. Therefore, the user closes the page and continues searching. The next behavioral factor is about this.

Return to search

The situation is the same: the user opened a page from the search results, only this time he was satisfied with everything. A convenient and functional site and at first glance it is clear that the information is adequate to the key request. Let's say this is some kind of article on a topic that interests him. A person reads the material to the end, after which he realizes that the information was not exhaustive: he did not receive answers to all his questions. What does the visitor do? He closes the tab and continues to look for information on other sources.

The search algorithm also takes this into account. It lowers the ranking of sites, after visiting which visitors use the search again. If the search continues, the problem is not solved or not completely solved.

Example:

A person types the key query “replacing brake pads on a Renault Logan.” He goes to one of the search results pages and starts studying the material. Everything is fine, but here’s the problem: the portal only says about replacing the front brake pads of this car. There is not a word about the rear ones, but the user needs this information. The visitor reads to the end, closes the tab and goes to another resource.

There he finds information about replacing both front and rear pads, but does not see video how to do it live. The person goes to the third site, where all this is available. He reads the material, watches the video, then stops searching and closes the browser. The last site, all other things being equal, will be a priority for the search engine.

Session length

This is simply the time spent by the visitor on the pages of the site. Everything is relatively simple here: the more time he was on the resource, the better. This means that the materials are interesting to him and the site is convenient to use. And if a person also “walks” through the pages, moving from section to section, that’s even better. The next behavioral factor is just about this.

Session depth

Shows how many pages of the site the user has visited. In general, the more, the better. The factor shows not only that the materials are interesting in principle, but also that the resource is convenient for surfing.

Often, in order to increase the depth of the session, webmasters artificially complicate the structure of the site, for example, placing continuation of articles on other pages, making a redundant menu, and so on. You shouldn't do this: users will leave portals with a complex structure, because they are inconvenient to use. This means that the failure rate will increase.

Internal behavioral factors using the example of Yandex Metrics

Does the site have direct traffic?

If visitors type in the search bar not a key query, but immediately the name of a specific site, they receive . The same applies to cases when users access the site from bookmarks, favorites folder, magazine or personal TOP ( visual bookmarks). This factor says two things. Firstly, the resource has its own constant. Secondly, the site is simply known to a large number of people- he has a powerful brand.

Example:

The visitor types “ ” in the search bar and goes to a certain site from the search results. In this case, the resource receives search traffic. If the user immediately types, for example, “Svyaznoy” or “Euroset”, then this is already a direct transition. The more such transitions, the higher the site’s position in search results.

This option search algorithms is used to calculate dynamic page weight And recognize artificial cheating of behavioral factors. The robot analyzes the movement of the mouse cursor on the page. If you try to increase the movement indicators, they will be primitive and of the same type. A real user moves the cursor more chaotically. Below we will talk in more detail about boosting behavioral indicators.

Site heat map: page elements that attract the most attention from visitors

Click-through rate of links from the snippet

If users often go to sections of the site they are interested in directly via a link from the search, this also increases the site’s ranking by robots. The factor says, firstly, that information is relevant to the target request. Secondly, the visitor finds it faster necessary information: he does not use the menu and does not even open it, but immediately goes to the desired section.

CTR of social media buttons

Search engines also take into account How actively users share content. This also means that the information on the site is useful and interesting.

What to do to improve behavioral factors on the site

The answer is simple: create websites that quickly and efficiently solve user problems. Here's what you need to do for this:

  • publish . If these are articles, then they should be written in simple and understandable language and provide comprehensive information on request. Feel free to give more information. Sometimes you can hear the opinion that people are reluctant to read large chunks of text on the Internet. This is only partly true, and mostly applies to social networks. When you're writing about a serious topic, don't be afraid to give the reader more data. Firstly, this reduces the risk of refusal, and secondly, the session time increases;
  • make the site convenient. What good is a good article if no one finds or reads it? Work out the UX characteristics, make a convenient menu. Set up an adequate search on the site: this way visitors will quickly find the information they need;
  • work on the design. Now the trend is a large amount of “air” - free space on the pages. Make readable headlines that immediately catch the eye and can be read at a glance. The background of the text should be as contrasting as possible. If everything merges and this dazzles the eyes, the user will leave the site, even if there is useful content;
  • create an optimal structure and menu. Do not forget about the three-click rule: the user must reach the goal in 3-5 clicks on the mouse button;

One more point: behavioral factors do not work separately and their combinations must always be taken into account. An improvement in one indicator may have a negative impact on another. For example, you wanted to increase the depth and time of the session due to redundant structure. But this can increase the bounce rate, as well as search continuation. A person will simply leave an inconvenient resource where they need to constantly switch something, search and do a lot of unnecessary actions. Your task is to find the optimal balance of behavioral factors.

Interesting fact. There is a debate between SEOs and webmasters about which is better: open sections of the site in the current tab, or redirect the user to a new one. There is no ready-made recipe here. On the one hand, if everything happens in one window, this increases the length and depth of the session. On the other hand, switching from the current tab to a new one can be regarded by the robot as a refusal or continuation of the search. In addition, this format is not always convenient for the user: he would like to finish reading the current material first, but if he clicks on the link in the body of the text, he will not be able to do this - it will immediately open new section. Then you will have to go back and finish reading, or look for a link in the text after reading.

The irony is that no one fully knows how search algorithms work. Therefore, it is difficult to give a definite answer. It all depends on the individual characteristics of the site.

Why you shouldn’t cheat behavioral factors

Term SEO (search engine optimization - optimization for search engines) arose almost simultaneously with the advent of search engines. Website creators tried to tailor their creations to robot algorithms in order to improve search rankings. At first it was relatively simple: I stuffed it into the text more keys, and the site reached the TOP. Ranking by keywords is the first and only Yandex algorithm, which was used at the very beginning of the system. Let's not say what this led to.

Now, according to Yandex itself, the search engine takes into account 800 different parameters and their combinations. They all boil down to one thing: a site in the top should satisfy user requests as much as possible.

In addition, the domestic search engine mercilessly punishes any attempts to artificially cheat any of the parameters. Behavioral factors are no exception.

If a few years ago (until August 31, 2018) it was possible to promote a website through purchased links, now agencies for creating and promoting websites offer new service- cheating of behavioral factors. Dozens of exchanges have been created where performers, for a small fee, are offered to create the appearance of movement on a particular resource.

It looks like this: a certain customer places a simple task on the site - go to a certain site and perform some actions on it. For example, open the desired section, click on the links provided, and so on. In this case, the performer must spend on the resource certain time. The calculation is clear: the more users visit the site and stay there for some time, the better the behavioral results. And everything would be fine if not for one “but”. Search engines have long learned to recognize such manipulations.


Remember about the site heat map? For a custom visitor, the cursor movements are too formulaic and monotonous. The robot immediately sees this and regards it as an attempt at artificial optimization. For this, the site can be lowered in search results and even have a filter applied.

Conclusion

Does this mean that the creators of search engines have outplayed unscrupulous SEOs? Perhaps yes. But all those who work honestly only benefit from this. The end user also benefits. Now he is more likely to receive truly high-quality material, and not a creation tailored to the work of robots, which will not solve his problem. Make the site convenient, post quality content and take your well-deserved place in the TOP of search results. Good luck in your promotion!

Hi all! Recently they have become the object of keen interest of most webmasters. In general, at first I didn’t take behavioral ones seriously, but just out of curiosity I decided to improve this display on the Forex website. I didn’t use different services like Userator to boost behavioral factors, but did it very simply. But more on that below.

As a result of a little work on the site, its position in Yandex didn’t exactly jump, but upon careful analysis, I discovered that many queries increased in search results.

Not long ago I installed Yandex.Metrica on the site, but I rarely use it. I just decided to check if there is any positive impact on the ranking of a site by Yandex on which Metrica is installed. On this moment Several weeks have passed, but I cannot say that there are any serious changes. Therefore, my main assistants in terms of analytics remain LiveInternet and Google Analytics (see,)

The first thing to understand is: Do behavioral factors affect rankings? To do this, I spotted an interesting hack. The point is that you can view the results without query-dependent factors. This is done as follows:

Enter the query “book”. We see the following output:

That is, in the first position is the site bookz.ru, in the second – mirknig.com, and it went further there – ozon.ru, mdk-arbat.ru, etc.

Now enter a query like this:

That is, we introduce some abracatabra and look. We see that the output is different. What have I done here?

In the first case (the first screenshot) the search for “books” is shown, taking into account query-dependent factors. That is, taking into account everyone ranking factors, the website bookz.ru is in first place in Yandex results. And without taking into account behavioral factors, the bookz.ru website is not ranked in first place.

All this means that today, roughly speaking, various factors have been added to the search results, due to which different pages are ranked differently. And links play an important role in these factors.

I often hear people say that link ranking will die altogether. But I believe that there is no basis for such statements at all. Because a site cannot be ranked by internal factors alone, and external factors are links. And I can’t even think of any alternative to external factors yet. Maybe one of you can tell me?

In addition, Yandex constantly “strangles” webmasters with various filters, many of which filter sites based on various types of link bombing. And since spam links are being fought, it means that links as such still play a fairly significant role in ranking, although Yandex representatives say that it is not entirely significant.

But since high page ranking depends not only on the quality of external links and internal factors, but also on behavioral ranking factors, then, given that this is currently the trend of the season, it is necessary to work especially carefully on this factor.

So. We smoothly approached what was originally discussed. What are behavioral factors? In simple terms, this is user behavior on your site and in search results that applies to your site. That is, the higher the user's satisfaction with your site, the higher the site in terms of behavioral factors. This interesting information obtained as a result of research was once published on SEOnews

What do we see here? And the fact that one of the important components of behavioral factors is the percentage of failures. What it is?

This is when a person lands on a page of your website and leaves it. The bounce rate may be different for different sites. For example, for blogs it could be 50-80%. Yes, yes, even 80% in some cases is normal. For an online store this figure may be 30%. The numbers, of course, are very conditional, but still.

In any case, in order to improve behavioral factors, you need to strive to reduce the bounce rate and increase the user’s time on the site. How can this be achieved?

How to improve behavioral factors:

1. I have already said above that, first of all, you need increase page viewing time. How to do it? First, and most importantly, if an article is optimized for a query, then it (the article) must be relevant to this query. And it must give an answer to the question that lies in the meaning of the request. That is, the user needs to get an answer to his question. He lands on a page of our website and finds the necessary information there. He studies this information, and it takes time. And this is only to our advantage, because if users spend a lot of time on the site (page), then there is helpful information, and, therefore, such a page can be ranked highly

You can view user factors of any site using DoubleClick Ad Planner. For example, for my site it turned out like this:

Now we need to compare the performance of our site with sites of similar subjects. Here, in the DoubleClick Ad Planner report, just below there will be a list of competing sites

We see that all the blogs that are here are all on the topic. That is, there is nothing left. Let's take Dimka's blog (blog.dimok.ru), look at the user factors for the domain blog.dimok.ru

Why compare this data? Remember that I said that for an online store a bounce rate of 30% may be normal, but for a blog a bounce rate of 70-80% will be normal. So, with the help of such a comparison, you can see whether the behavioral factors of your site meet the standards of your niche. That is, in this case, if you compare your blog with Dima Golopolosov’s blog, then, in general, I see that in terms of the average duration of stay on the site the situation is approximately the same

2. You have to try increase the number of sessions. A session is a series of views by one visitor. Simply put, this is when one user views several pages. How to achieve this?

We look at which of the pages on our site need to be improved in search, and which of them have a fairly high bounce rate. We find such pages and begin to work on each of them. First of all, it is advisable to provide a link somewhere at the beginning of the page to other interesting material on the topic on your site so that the user goes to another page.

There is a special plugin for WordPress - Related Posts, which inserts a list of similar publications after each article. This is good, but there is a BUT! I analyzed how people click on these links generated by the plugin. And he compared how links were followed directly from the body of the article. In the second case, the number of transitions will be significantly higher. Therefore, it is best to link from the body of the article. But linking is not like many people (and I have sinned before) - it’s just stupid to create the necessary anchors in the body of the article, and use the full name of the articles to which we link as anchors. In this case, there will be significantly more transitions, they will be more targeted, and, therefore, users will stay on the site longer. In this way, one article clings to another, a whole logical chain is built, and as a result behavioral ranking factors improve.

3. Video insertion. I didn't pay much attention to this before. So what about that video? Just think! But then, in the light of behavioral factors, I somehow rethought this matter. I looked at how Shakin (shakin.ru), and many others, have their pages organized. Mikhail Shakin has been publishing this for a long time after each article. interesting video. Moreover, it does not have to be a video on the topic of the article in which it is published. It could also just be something interesting. Therefore, publishing a video is an excellent opportunity to keep the user on the page, thereby improving the search engine’s opinion of this page

4. Add a Google+ button to your website(and other social network buttons based on the Share principle). Behavioral factors and their improvement are also where your visitors come from. If they come not only from search engines, but also from other sources, then this is positively assessed by search engines. Surely Google will pay a lot of attention to its social component. This can be judged even by the fact that in the service Google “Webmaster Tools” such a menu appeared - Indicators "+1", which lets you see how social activity impacts Google search results. That is, the connection between search results directly and social activity is obvious. And if the search giant Google takes it into account, then Yandex will probably also take it into account. Therefore, we need to work to increase the “distribution” of our materials on different social networks. networks. You can read about how Internet users feel about Google’s innovation in an analytical article

5. Improve website usability. Here I mean ease of navigation, ease of movement of users on the site. All this ultimately affects the indicator of behavioral factors. You can do the following. When applied to a WordPress blog, you can make the sidebar more informational. For example, screw some useful service, you can even make some kind of video in the sidebar with a greeting from the blog author. This, by the way, is on many SEO blogs in the burzhunet. Or simply make all the links in the sidebar more informative: design them with images so that the user is more willing to follow these links. Or you can write some useful material in Word format, for example, about how to properly buy links in . Then upload it to your hosting and provide a download link somewhere in the sidebar. And in Word file Also include links to your site where appropriate. That is, we are again working to ensure that the user concentrates their attention on our website longer

Conclusion

In the article, I focused more on internal factors, but there are also behavioral ranking factors that can be classified as external. Here I include user behavior in search results, namely click-through rate. True, I will talk about all this later.

There is no magic in SEO, and search engine promotion It has long ceased to be a simple matter of increasing links to a site and adding texts with key queries to pages. There are works that seem like shamanism related to the preparation of content, structure, links, etc. This is discussed a lot at conferences, on YouTube, articles on websites and courses.

I suggest look at SEO from the perspective of user happiness and look at the work we do for this.

SEO = user happiness

The main task of an SEO specialist is to make sure that the user is able to solve his problem, expressed in the request, on the pages of the site.

A user's happiness is determined by his behavior, his actions on and off the site. In a professional environment, we use the concept of “behavioral factors”.

Behavioral factors

Behavioral factors (PF) are a group of factors associated with user behavior on search results and on the website, as well as some host and document characteristics.

In this article we will look at some mechanics of influencing PF.

So, behavioral factors are divided into external, host and internal.

How to improve external (click) and host behavioral factors

We will influence external (click-through) PFs through improving snippets, improving the CTR of the site in search results. First, we need to find out the average CTR of pages.

The CTR of a page is the aggregate of the CTR of all requests on the page.

We need to know it because we first need to work with snippets (and content) of pages with a poor average CTR.

You can obtain information in the following way:

1) Use Yandex.Webmaster: “ Search queries» – “Query statistics” – “Popular queries” – Select a region and download the sample in XLS. We work with requests for which there were transitions. In the resulting file, we calculate the average using the CTR column.

2) We add the upload to Key Collector, find relevant pages for queries, synchronize the data with the file and calculate the average CTR of the pages.

3) We take on pages with a CTR below the average for the site. What to do with pages with zero CTR: the file will contain a list of queries without clicks. We understand the reasons, the main ones are lack of positions, bad snippet.

4) From the list, select the pages with the worst performance.

Interpretation of such a metric can give rise to a bunch of unnecessary and possibly harmful manipulations on the site. This formula definitely does not have enough position and, probably, the maximum possible CTR for the request (maybe even the maximum for the position or for the interval) for normalization. Or weigh it in some other way. Accordingly, working on queries in comparison with “CTR is below the average for the site” (how is that even?) can be a rather strange activity. For example, “site average CTR” = 0.05, and page N has average = 0.01. What does this mean? That's right, nothing, just the fact that they compared something and got something - Pavel Nikulin, Head of Analytics and Research at Demis Group.

What to pay attention to when working with snippets:

  • Relevant Title tag.
  • Complete and relevant Description meta tag.
  • Noticeable Favicon.
  • Using extended snippets from Yandex and Google.

  • Fully completed Yandex.Directory and Google My Business.

  • Micro markup of bread crumbs, product cards, listings, reviews, “Contact” pages.

  • Editing quick links in Yandex (via Webmaster).

  • Correction of text content, from where the snippet is now snatched.

  • Using html symbols and emoji.

  • Connecting Yandex.Dialogues.

  1. Turbo pages and AMP.
  2. Pictures and videos in the snippet.

How to influence internal PFs

We determine the indicators of competitors

To begin with, what data can be analyzed:

  • Time on site.
  • Number of pages viewed.
  • Bounce rate.
  • Traffic sources.

Mechanics:

1. We identify the closest competitors by key queries using the engine.seointellect.ru service - search for competitors, 4-5 sites are enough.

Handling requests and pages with high bounce rates

Our task is to identify such requests and pages and eliminate the cause of the high bounce rate.

We use Yandex Metrica. Go to “Reports” – “Standard” – “Search engines”.

Then we sort the results by bounce rate; you can additionally set a filter for the number of visits from 10 (to remove random transitions with bounces).

We get data on pages with the worst bounce rates, broken down by search engines. Now we need to understand the reasons for this large quantity refusals.

Possible reasons:

  • Product out of stock (for ecom).
  • There is no response to the user's request.
  • Usability problems.
  • High price.
  • Low assortment.
  • Lots of other things.

Speed ​​up page loading

Download speed – important parameter, affecting internal PFs. Speeding up page loading times reduces bounce rates. The tool to check is Google PageSpeed ​​Insights.

We pay attention to desktop and mobile version. For desktop we try to score more than 80%, for mobile – about 50% (but not less than 30).

Adding texts

When preparing text for pages, you need to be guided by the benefit for the visitor, and not just by the volume and number of occurrences. The task of preparing the text is divided into two stages.

1) Please note that the text should not be diluted with various layout elements: headings, tables, lists, pictures, etc. When composing headings, in addition to the text analyzer, keep in mind that before reading, users quickly scan the text, clinging to the headings. If they don't reflect the content of the page, it may not get read. Also, the text must correspond to the topic, i.e. contain words that describe the topic.

2) After adding text, be sure to monitor the scroll and transparency map to make sure that the text is interesting to the visitor and that it interacts with the elements. You can view such data in the Yandex.Metrica service, in the “Scroll Map”. The redder the area, the more attention users pay to it.

One of the works to improve usability and the overall quality of the resource is an audit of the content of pages and content. With this work, you can understand what the user wants to see on the site’s pages, what type of content needs to be placed, and what elements are important.

1) We analyze top sites using marker queries to compile a table of contents.

2) We pay attention to all the elements, starting from the upper left corner of the site, moving to the lower right, recording all the data in the table.

3) We look through the sites one by one, mark repeating elements, write new ones at the end of the list and check them on all sites.

4) After compiling the table, you can determine which elements your competitors use most often and begin to systematically implement them on your website.

Example of a simplified table of contents:

5) It is imperative to control the basic values ​​of the internal PFs, which we examined earlier.

How to influence host factors

Collection of complete correct semantic core to cover the maximum number of queries in the topic

It is important to try to cover the maximum number of queries in the subject of the site and build the correct structure based on key queries. If you sell TVs, you need to create a CN with a maximum of brands, types, sizes, types, features and extensions to them.

Improving the average position in SY

After creating new pages according to the collected semantics, it is important that the site ranks for the majority of queries. To do this, it is necessary to carry out standard SEO work: commercial audit, technical audit, text on page optimization, work with external links, improve behavioral factors (discussed in this article above). Based on the requests collected, we monitor the average position and try to ensure that it is not lower than the TOP 50.

Conclusion

In the article we looked at correct actions to improve PF. These mechanics must be used in conjunction with other website promotion efforts, which in turn should also be aimed at meeting user needs. Incorporate work with behavioral factors into your promotion processes and your sites’ positions will improve.

Good luck in conquering the TOPs!