Behavioral factors page. Behavioral ranking factor. Behavioral factors in Yandex and Google results

Behavioral factors Ranking is an analysis of the actions of the search engine (search engine) of site visitors. The results of this analysis affect the ranking of the site in search engines Oh.

How is information about the behavior of visitors on the site collected? I will list the main ways to obtain information about user behavior:

• statistics services (Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics);
• web browsers (almost every more or less well-known and major search engine on this moment has its own Internet browser, through which the necessary statistics are collected (Google - Chrome, Yandex - Yandex.Browser, Bing - Internet Explorer));
• browser extensions (toolbars);
• other services and applications.

• Failure rate. This indicator records the user leaving the page immediately after viewing the first page. The percentage of visitors who leave the site without viewing anything other than the first page is called the bounce rate. In fact, this characteristic reflects the relevance of what is displayed in search results search query pages. The reasons for a high percentage of failures may be a boring design, a site structure that is incomprehensible to the user, and, if the user has satisfied his need for information or a product by opening the page he needs.
• View depth. This indicator reflects the number of pages viewed by one user. And the more there are, the better this indicator. But at the same time, the viewing depth may indicate a confusing and illogical site structure, which can already negatively affect search engine rankings.
• Time on site. The time spent by the user on the Internet resource is also considered important criterion behavioral factors. To increase the length of a visitor’s stay on the site’s pages, you can introduce a photo gallery, post something interesting that will take time and retain the user. But you need to be careful in this matter so that the potential buyer, if this is a commercial Internet resource, does not forget about the main purpose of the visit.
• Return to search. This criterion reflects the fact that if a user, having opened your site, wandered through its pages and even spent enough time there, still goes back to the search, then perhaps he did not solve his problem, or received an incomplete answer. Ideally, it should be like this: the user came to your site, received necessary information and never returned to the search results.
• Direct visits and branded traffic. An indicator that records the number of visits to a website by entering the domain of an Internet resource in address bar browser, or transitions from the bookmarks bar. If a site is remembered, it means it was useful to users, and this is already a signal for an increase in ranking.

Many people try to cheat behavioral factors by imitating user actions special programs, but now it is recognized by search engine algorithms. Therefore, for such actions you can be subject to sanctions from search engines.

But if you still decide to try to cheat, then in order not to fall under the filter, use queries for which your site is no further than the TOP 30 in the search results. You need to raise your positions to this level using other methods. It is recommended to use at least 10 different queries for cheating. You should increase no more than 20% of the real statistics, or better yet, about 10%. At the moment, you can use the following services to boost behavioral factors:

• User;
• SerpClic+PFLINKk+Vpodskazke;
• Miralinks (to enhance articles with clicks).

In general, the influence of promotion for website promotion is insignificant. Most users of promotion services are filtered. The best way to boost behavioral factors is where other methods have already been exhausted, for example, promotion with links.

Commercial factors

What are commercial factors? These are the indicators that determine the reliability of an online store.

To determine the need to add one or another so-called “commercial factor” to the site, you should analyze the top search results in the relevant topic.

The analysis can be done using a special matrix of commercial factors. In it, in the first column we write a list of competitors in our field from the TOP-30, and horizontally we write a list of all the commercial factors that we noticed among any of the competitors in the top. Then we simply note with pros and cons what exactly each of the competitors has on the site and what is missing. Thus, we will see what commercial factors are present among competitors who are in the top of the search engine by thematic queries, what factors you need to add to your site in this regard.

Dear colleagues! In this article, I want to go into detail about the main behavioral factors and what actions a webmaster must take to influence them.

Behavioral factors have appeared in our country quite recently. Before this, Yandex said that it has sufficient information about users, but it does not yet know where to use it.

If you have a problem with the behavioral factors that we will talk about now, do not connect, do not feed all the bad information to Yandex.

So what are the main behavioral ranking factors we currently have?

The main ones are those that we can influence when promoting sites.

There are also numerous additional factors that we cannot influence in any way. Therefore, we do not take them into account.

1) Bounce Rate– when a user, having typed some query, finds sites in a search engine, clicks on one of them, opens the page, and leaves the site without walking around the site.

That is, in – out, bounce rate, one-page visit.

This bounce rate is not taken into account equally for all topics.

For example, you need to find out postcode city ​​of Kirillov. You typed a request, opened the site and wrote down the index. You do not need any more information on the site. Yandex also takes such requests into account.

Therefore, not for all topics, not for all query clusters, Yandex will take this into account.

2) Time spent on the site– how much time users spend on your website on average.

This is perhaps the main indicator today that Yandex takes into account.

If a user spends very little time with you (up to a minute), it means that he is not interested in your site. This means, accordingly, Yandex may lower the search results a little for this.

3) First and last clicks upon issuance. The user typed a query and several results were displayed. It starts opening all ten results.

And Yandex, in the calculation of the first and last result, which the user opened, ranks them higher, and intermediate results slightly lower in relevance.

If you clicked on the first site in the search results, it means that this site lured you in some way, and clicking on the last site means that you found the information you need on it, and you don’t need to search anymore.

We can influence these factors and improve them.

How:

Firstly, your website should in any case have an analytics system installed to track its effectiveness keywords, and to track some behavioral issues.

For this purpose, I usually use the Google.Analytics system on my websites; it is much more powerful and convenient.

Secondly, you need to make a cool, manageable, readable snippet, insert some enticements into it so that it attracts the user.

The more often you are clicked on this snippet, the more positive points you will earn.

Third, as for the site itself, is user convenience, so-called usability (i.e., ease of use of your site by the user).

So that you have a well-thought-out page structure, so that the user does not get lost on your site, so that he calmly moves from section to section, and it is convenient for him.

Fourth, this is working on landing pages. To keep a user on a page that is optimized, it must be 100% relevant to the query.

If you optimize a page for many key queries, you have written large text, the user will simply get lost and exit.

Therefore, the golden rule, which should be used whenever possible, is one page - one request.

Always work on landing pages. There are testing tools such as Google Website Optimizer, which allows you to test this or that version of the page or this or that version of the page structure (multivariate testing).

If you have a high bounce rate on your landing page, and users don’t stay on it and don’t read the commercial offers on it, then it needs to be changed, and new options need to be tested.

Fifthly- This Additional Information Online. That is, create an additional cluster of pages on the site, where we will add information of interest to the user on the site.

Where to get this information? For example, using Yandex hints that appear when you type your key query in the search.

You have noticed more than once that when you type in a query, a list of other, identical queries appears below. These are Yandex hints, that is, what users are often looking for.

Therefore, it is necessary to expand the content on the site so that users spend more time on it and read more pages.

The conclusion is this: You should always work to improve your website. The more attention we pay to this, the less likely it is that Yandex will downgrade us for behavioral factors.

Until a computer starts thinking like a human, it won't be able to tell a bad site from a good one... the way a human would. In fact, search engines have in their arsenals techniques for collecting and analyzing data, with the help of which silicon brains can easily put meat experts in the belt.

Let’s make a reservation right away - by “good” site we mean “worthy of taking a place in the search results for a specific key query“, let’s not dive into the jungle of site-building aesthetics.

So, without going into details, search engines now use three approaches in a comprehensive manner: ranking pages by authority (for example, the PageRank algorithm that brought Google popularity), behavioral factors (analysis of the actions of real visitors to real sites), and machine learning(an example is Yandex’s Matrixnet, which trains algorithms by assessing samples by specialist assessors, and essentially links and balances the first two approaches).

Ranking by authority worked very well in the early stages of the Internet, but later the “too mathematical” nature of this approach allowed optimizers to use tricks that exploit system weaknesses found during experiments. The quality of search results suffered, search engines introduced amendments, additional formulas and coefficients, filters and sanctions, but a truly major breakthrough was made when it became possible to rank sites based on the preferences of their real live visitors. Analysis of behavioral factors is more objective than any personal bias (both expert and profane), since it works with the preferences of a large sample target audience.

How search engines collect data

1 Statistics systems(Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica). Almost all website owners want to have information about traffic and all audience actions. The best, and even free tools Search engines provide this, but in return they receive huge amounts of data.

2 Browsers. I Internet Explorer runs on Bing, Chrome runs on Google, and Yandex also has its own product in this niche. Although Chrome, for example, is deep, deep in the settings, where only hack-heads will get into, it provides the opportunity to uncheck the “Automatically send to” checkbox. Google statistics usage and crash reports", we cannot guarantee that this will deprive the good corporation of access to the data it needs. In general, the flow of data from branded browsers is quite significant; it allows you to additionally cover the segment of sites without statistics systems (or, more often, with competitors’ statistics systems).

3 Browser add-ons. You can assess the need of search engines for traffic data by aggressively promoting Yandex.Bar. Turning any browser into a “branded” one, the add-on diligently sends traffic statistics to its native data center.

With the above products, search engines get almost full information about the behavior of the audience of each indexed site. The next logical step is to show higher those sites that, other things being equal, evoke a more positive reaction from visitors. There are, of course, some subtleties here: in some topics, page viewing time will be the main factor positive assessment, in others (for example, if the user needs to take one look at the page to perform the required action) - it does not play a special role. In some places, browsing depth is very important, but if the site consists of one page, then sometimes it is not worth denying it high positions. This is where data interpretation and segmentation, as well as machine learning, come into play (if assessors consistently rate high-quality one-page promotional sites highly, the search engine will learn to exclude browsing depth from the list of important behavioral factors for similar resources).

Key Behavioral Ranking Factors
1 Bounce Rate(bounce rate) - the percentage of visitors who left the site after viewing the login page. For sites that require several transitions to other pages - and these are the majority - this is a very good criterion for quality and relevance to the topic. The visitor leaves the site either because he found what he needed and did what he was going to do (and what the site owner required), or because he did not like the site or is not relevant to the search query. Try to reduce the bounce rate - increase relevance, improve design and UX, make landing pages more understandable, attractive, and so on. Of course, there will never be a 100% “assimilation” of the audience, but we must strive for this. And not least because of the consideration of behavioral factors by search engines, but because of conversion - the bounce rate is directly related to the site’s ability to turn “visitors” into “buyers”.

2 Time spent on the site. Good criterion quality in the vast majority of cases. If a high rate is achieved not due to the incomprehensibility of the content and confusing navigation. You can increase viewing time using the simplest everyday logic: give visitors something that interests them, and they will devote their time to studying these materials. These could be articles, photo galleries, videos, some services such as mortgage calculators (in the subject of the site, of course), etc. All engagement techniques should not harm conversions, so don’t mechanically add everything to the page.

3 View depth. An important criterion for content projects. Depth can be increased through thoughtful navigation and cross-referencing, and, of course, interesting content. Many sites try to increase depth by breaking large articles into several parts located on different pages, however, this practice is justified only if visitors are highly motivated to read the entire article (this works well for reviews of computer components, but many will refuse to follow the continuation of the “humanitarian” article on how we can reorganize the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate).

4 Return to re-search. If a visitor returns from the site back to the search, it means he did not find what he was looking for. This parameter can only be controlled by increasing relevance landing pages requests, as well as maintaining competitive prices for goods and services.

5 Returning to the site is not from a search. If a visitor has bookmarked the site or remembered the address, this will be a significant plus in favor of the resource. However, you should not intrusively suggest adding a site to bookmarks; this must be done subtly and tastefully.

6 The nature of the mouse cursor movement and the pattern of movement around the site. Statistics systems collect data not only about where the visitor clicked, but also how he moved the cursor. This is necessary to build “heat maps of attention”, as well as to filter out attempts to cheat behavioral factors with scripts. Patterns of live visitors are quite difficult to emulate, which is why, by the way, many sites that tried to boost user factors in the first months of their implementation quickly fell down in search results or were banned - search engines noticed that the cursor was controlled not by real people, but by programs. Analysis of the heat map and recordings of viewing sessions will allow, with enough time and meticulousness, to identify and eliminate obstacles on conversion routes.

7 Snippet click-through rate (CTR). The more people click on your snippet (a short description with a link in the search results), the better the search engine treats you. This is logical: if the snippet is relevant to the query and attracts the attention of users, then the site is likely to provide a high-quality response to the query. There are ways to control the snippet, and this is worth paying attention to - Quick links, correct title, good text will help increase both traffic and positions.

8 Social media buttons. If the installed buttons (it is best to install not scripts like AddThis, but native buttons of the social networks themselves) are clicked, this not only increases the number of subscribers to your pages in these social networks, but is also an important signal of the quality of the site for search engines. Install the buttons as early as possible - each subscriber will be a significant plus.

conclusions
Search engines analyze data on behavioral ranking factors quite objectively and qualitatively. Do not try to manipulate them directly (using scripts, buying untargeted traffic, etc.): this will lead to sanctions and will not bring any benefit. It is much more effective and important to actually increase the quality of the site, its attractiveness and conversion. Then users will behave the way you want, and all of the above indicators and, accordingly, the site’s position will grow.

Behavioral ranking factors are a number of indicators that determine user behavior on the search engine results page (Yandex, Google, etc.) or on a specific website.

As practice shows, they have a significant impact on the resource’s position in search engine rankings. This is not surprising, because the main task PS is to make the output as much as possible relevant to queries users.

It is quite difficult to say exactly which parameters influence search results to a greater or lesser extent, since search engines keep information regarding ranking algorithms secret. But the experiments carried out by optimizers allow us to highlight the following: behavioral factors of Yandex and other search engines:

• The first click on the search engine results, that is, if after entering a search query, the visitor immediately clicked on your resource, then this will give you an advantage over other sites.
• The last click on the issue is no less important parameter, that is, if the user closed the search results after visiting your site.
• The bounce rate allows you to identify the percentage of visitors who, after viewing one page of your resource, chose to close it. This value is especially important for blog analysis.
• Browsing depth, that is, the number of pages visited by the user before he left.
• The time spent by the user on the site, accordingly, the longer it is, the better.
• Scrolling pages and moving the mouse. Search engines can even analyze such user actions; their absence indicates evidence of cheating behavioral factors.
• Returning the user to the site without the help of a search engine. If visitors come back to your site, for example, from bookmarks, then this also improves your visibility among search engines.
• Clicks on external links, if they are missing, then this indicates their inappropriateness, and in some cases, that they are “venal”.
• Site presence in in social networks. Mentioning your site in person-to-person exchanges is the single best element of the ranking algorithm.

Behavioral analysis

Of course, it is impossible to analyze absolutely all behavioral characteristics of a site, as well as determine their exact number. In addition, it must be taken into account that for different types resources, the same indicators can have completely different impacts.

To determine data that takes into account the behavioral factor, you can use Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics or another statistics service. As for the first two, the question very often arises: should their counters be installed on the site if they “lay out” all the “ins and outs” of the resource to the PS?

In many ways, it depends on the promotion method you follow. When using “black schemes”, it is better not to use Yandex.Metrica, since it will only help you get under search filters faster.

However, if optimization is carried out in accordance with the requirements of the PS, then installing a statistics counter, on the contrary, will help increase the level of trust in Yandex. There is an opinion that good behavioral factors can protect a site from sanctions even if there is high link activity.

Cheating behavioral factors

Along with the growing influence of behavioral characteristics, various ways their cheats. It is worth noting that from the point of view search engines behavioral factors are the usual recording of user clicks (actions), which are stored in some files (logs).

Therefore, when any cheating method is used, it cannot but catch the eye, since the logs in this case look unnatural. This is due to the fact that, firstly, they are wound up mainly commercial inquiries. And secondly, the appearance of unnatural traffic of visitors cannot remain unnoticed by the PS.

Among all the cheating methods, there are three main ones:

• Creation of a botnet that emulates the actions of a certain number of users over long periods of time.
• Using programs that emulate user actions.
• Application special services on implementation certain actions to attract targeted visitors.

All listed methods are considered spam. Many resources for the promotion of which such methods were used fell under search engine filters. But if you refuse to use them, these sites have a chance to return to adequate positions according to their current relevance.

But Yandex emphasizes that the use of such cheating can lead to the loss of not only ranking positions, but also reputation, which, in turn, can cause irreparable results.

Improving behavioral ranking factors

The main task of the optimizer when creating and promoting a high-quality resource, the so-called “site for people,” is to make it as informative and interesting as possible for the user. This requires great job, both over its content and over appearance, but the results will be incredibly high. What will help improve the behavioral characteristics of the resource?

• Regular, finding and removing non-topic queries with a high bounce rate, content optimization.
• Improving the site snippet, that is text information, related to the resource and reflected in the search results, competent filling meta tags TITLE and DESCRIPTION. It has been proven that an optimized snippet attracts visitors, even if the site is not ranked the highest top positions in the TOP.
• Project usability analysis. Of course, everyone’s concepts of convenience and beauty are different, but there are a number of standard criteria. Creating a literate .
• Conducting a technical audit, getting rid of broken links.
• Constant development and updating of content.
• Addition useful services, video or audio recordings. This will increase the time the user spends on the site.

Thus, behavioral factors are increasingly influencing the ranking of a resource in Yandex and other search engines. Therefore, when creating and optimizing websites, you should think, first of all, about their quality and attractiveness for users.

How difficult it is to keep your website in the first positions and get into the top 50 on a certain topic. You constantly need to analyze the site, analyze competitors, follow news on the market and understand how to correctly present your product or service so that it is noticed by both the search engine and the consumer, while complying with all promotion requirements.

What is a behavioral factor?

One of important indicators for the site is a behavioral factor, i.e. this is the behavior of people on the site, which can tell us how interesting the resource is, how much it meets the needs of visitors and whether it is of interest to the consumer so that he comes back again.

Some consider this indicator not very important, others, on the contrary, say that it is worth paying attention and analyzing behavior; in any case, you should definitely pay attention to it, and improving the indicators will only be beneficial.

Before examining the factors in more detail, we can consider the indicator on simple example. The user, upon request “Buy a children's toy,” receives a specific website result that the search engine has prepared for him. Next, he selects a resource and begins to look at what toys there are, whether there is a description for them, and whether the price is indicated. If he likes a product and wants to buy it, then in one click the product should go to the cart and payment should take place in several steps. All these actions make up user behavior, which turns into behavioral factors. Google ranking, Yandex and other search engines.

Types of behavioral factors

All behavioral factors can be divided into external and internal. First, the user sees information about the site when issuing a search query, i.e. he has external behavior. If he likes it brief information about the site (description, address, availability of contacts), then he can click on the link, thereby completing the action.

It is worth understanding that if external factor works (there will be a click on the link), then the internal one will work (there will be a visit to the site, which can be short, or can be long, it all depends on the creators of the site).

It is always worth analyzing user actions for certain period time, for example three months or six months. If any was added new information or a new product that you want to tell about in real and potential clients, but sales have not yet reached a certain level, then the analysis should be carried out more often, comparing behavioral indicators week by week.

What indicators influence behavioral factors

To better understand users, it is worth analyzing their behavior on the site, and certain indicators can help with this:

How to improve PF

The resulting figures for indicators should be studied in comparison with several periods to get an overall picture of the site's development. This is what can help determine further actions and an understanding of how to improve behavioral factors if you are not satisfied with the statistics, there are few sales, but there are a lot of visitors.

First, you need to understand how well the page responds to the request that brings users to the site. Maybe he is looking for products, but there is only one on the site, and that is only for an order that will have to wait a week. In addition, the answer to the request should not just be specific, but expanded. For example, if you buy 5 pieces, the free shipping or as a gift the 6th item, etc.

Secondly, you need to analyze all the pages and see which of them are the most unpopular. Understand why the page is not liked and what can be changed in it so that the user begins to linger on it.

Thirdly, you can increase traffic to the entire site by optimizing the text and each page for a specific request. In this case, it is better to promote one request to separate page, without mixing them together, as this may negatively affect the ranking.

Fourthly, the placement of keywords in the text, in headings, in descriptions. But it is worth remembering: the density of such words on the page should not exceed 4-5%, since if this indicator is exceeded, the search engine may consider the promotion aggressive and the site will fall under the filter.

It may be possible to influence behavioral factors in the following way: in a simple way, as improving the usability of the site, i.e. making it more convenient, understandable and simple, so that you can immediately find a product, put it in the cart, write a question to the manager, find out about delivery and payment. Don't forget about establishing social buttons, so, millions of people spend time on social networks every day, and perhaps it is more convenient for them to follow a company there.

The main method of improvement is content optimization

If the indicators are not satisfactory, then the main task is to improve behavioral factors. SEO specialists say that the first thing to start with is to optimize the site’s content, i.e. show your true face to users. Content is something unique that no one else has, although many sites don’t try very hard and simply copy texts without notifying the copyright holders.

Content is everything that can attract the user: text, pictures and photographs, video files. For example, the text should be interesting, unique and of high quality. It should be divided into paragraphs to make it easier to read, structured (subheadings and sentences are interconnected), perhaps diluted with pictures or videos for a visual example.

For example, if this is an online clothing store, then you need nice photos, description and, possibly, the presence of informational text to interest the buyer.

We should also talk about headlines, which play a significant role in promotion. The title should be attractive, short, but informative. It should prompt the user to take action - go to the site where he can find the answer to his request.

Cheat and ban

Search engines monitor and take into account behavioral ranking factors. Yandex, which is a Russian search engine, takes special care to ensure that there is no cheating. After all main principle- this is the purity of the search, so that the sites themselves achieve the first positions, doing a colossal job.

In 2014, website promotion using behavioral factors became a real boom, when many promotion companies paid attention only to this. These actions really brought results, positions grew, and clients were satisfied, seeing their site in the top, until Yandex introduced sanctions and began to impose sanctions on the site for cheating. Positions began to drop sharply, traffic fell, and sales practically stopped.

If you use any kind of cheating, you need to do it carefully and wisely so that behavioral factors naturally grow. Serpclick is a company that helps with promotion by calculating in advance the number of clicks on queries. Such a visit can be called natural, since the work is performed by real people who come to the site and conduct certain time, go to the required sections, and it doesn’t look like cheating.

Behavioral ranking factors: "Yandex"

The user enters a query into the search bar and waits for a relevant answer. The search engine, using its algorithm, tries to select sites that can answer the request, using the behavioral factor, since a machine is not able to replace a person.

However, Yandex, using its technology, still uses human labor, due to which the quality of sites that are located in the first positions has increased. Employees conduct very strict supervision over the issuance, since the main task is the most accurate response to the request received.

Yandex collects data on behavioral factors from different sources. Firstly, data collection when issuing a request. If the link is often clicked on and the site visit is long enough, it means that it becomes more relevant this request and ranks better in search results. Secondly, it collects information from the counter, if one is installed on the site, or from the installed Yandex browser.

PF and Google system

Google's behavioral ranking factors look somewhat different, and some believe that this search engine does not pay attention to this at all. However, according to the analyzes carried out, it can be said that Google takes into account various factors much less than Yandex, but still analyzes sites:

There are also negative factors that the system also takes into account, which can affect the position of the site, and this is worth remembering, because someone uses such earnings on behavioral factors, winding them up in an unnatural way, and someone will then pay for it and will be sanctioned by Google. For example, Penguin algorithm or Panda monitor low-quality links, of which there can be a lot.

Myths about behavioral factors

There are several misconceptions that many people are not aware of and think it is right, which leads to wrong actions.

Many people believe that the more people come to the site, the higher its position in further search results will be. On the one hand, this is true, but on the other hand, search engines take into account not one behavioral factor, but several that are interrelated.

Another rumor or myth is that site owners are monitored by search engines, so they let some resources appear on the first page, while others remain in the 20th and 30th positions. It cannot be ruled out that everyone is being watched, so the work is being carried out more carefully. But even if they don’t follow you, you should always remember that the work is done for the sake of the user, since he is a potential client.

What to expect in the future

What might happen in the future and how important will behavioral factors be? Yandex and other search engines will never give a direct answer, but several development options can be assumed:

• It is possible that behavioral ranking factors will no longer play an important role, as a different algorithm for ranking sites according to search queries and promotion technologies will have to be improved.
• It is possible that the importance of PF will increase, and this will be a revolutionary path in promotion.

In any case, you should not be afraid of one option or another, since you can always adapt to the work of search engines, configure the site correctly and achieve the desired indicators.

If you follow all the rules, create a site for users where they can find everything they need and want to come back again, then you will not need to boost the site, use black promotion methods and other steps to achieve first positions in the search results. By constantly improving the resource and analyzing behavioral factors, you can achieve good positions which will bring profit and success.