Proper optimization of behavioral factors in Rookee. Optimization of behavioral factors without cheating them

Reading time: 5 min

Hello, friends!

This article will be one of the most important for promoting your site.

In it we will look at behavioral factors, find out their main indicators, and also consider working methods for increasing them.

This material is very useful after the article about, since there is no point in attracting people if they do not improve the behavioral factor of our site. Everything needs to work in synergy. Therefore, everything needs to be worked out in a comprehensive manner.

You will learn how to improve behavioral factors in this material. In the future, I will often use the generally accepted abbreviation for this concept - PF.

If we give a simple definition to behavioral factors, then this is a set of indicators that evaluate a site based on the behavior of visitors on it. That is, how the visitor behaves on the site. Where he looks, where he clicks, how many pages he views, whether he returns to the site and others.

It is on the basis of these indicators, which we will consider further, that search engines form a general opinion about our site.

On this moment- This is a fundamental factor in the evaluation of a site by search engines. But the assessment proceeds, as it were, at the second level of nesting. First, the visitor evaluates the site, and then based on the visitor's behavior search engines are already forming their opinion and raising your site in the search results or lowering it.

After all, who but ordinary people can evaluate the usefulness of a resource to the maximum? Search engines, unfortunately, cannot yet do this themselves fully. Of course, they evaluate some indicators themselves, such as the number of referring domains to the site. But it is still impossible to independently assess the quality of the content itself and the site as a whole. After all, there must be an understanding of whether the content provides an answer to the visitor’s question and how well it does it?

And to understand all this, the visitor’s behavior on the resource is assessed. Many indicators are assessed, to which we now turn.

But first, I suggest you look at all the material in the video below.

Indicators of behavioral factors

As is the case with SEO optimization, behavioral factors are divided into 2 categories:

  1. Internal;
  2. External.

Internal indicators include all indicators of visitor behavior within the site. To external ones - the site’s performance in search results. Let's take a closer look at each group, because each group has more than one indicator.

Domestic

As usual, everything is in the form of a checklist. I will describe only the main factors that, in my opinion, greatly influence promotion. All indicators are very closely related to each other.

  • Time spent on the site - this indicator describes the usefulness of the resource based on the time spent by the visitor on it. A bad website cannot detain users for a long time;
  • View depth or number of views - the number of pages that a visitor viewed when visiting the site. If everything is done correctly, the user will want to view it again and again, which means that the site is useful and interesting;
  • Bounce rate is a metric that describes the usefulness of a resource based on the minimum amount of time spent on an article. There is a set minimum time limit. For Yandex this is 15 seconds. If the visit lasts less than this value, then this is a clear sign that the content does not answer the user’s question. After all, what can you read in 15 seconds? Even the minimum amount of 1500-2000 characters cannot be studied in such a time;

Therefore, if the bounce rate for some pages is more than 15-20%, then it is worth analyzing them. This means that the user either does not receive an answer to his question or sees something completely different from what he wanted. For example, I wanted to see some kind of step-by-step algorithm of actions, but they showed him an ordinary story.

The bounce rate for each visit can be analyzed using the web viewer in the Yandex metrics counter. Using this function, you can understand why visitors close the page and take measures to improve it. If you still don’t have this functionality, then be sure to read the article about. There I talked about everything in the text, and also recorded 2 detailed video lessons.

  • Return rate - many people underestimate this factor, although it is one of the most important. If a visitor returns to your site after the first visit, then behavioral factors add a “plus” to their treasury.

These are perhaps the most basic factors that I work only in combination. To improve them to the maximum extent, you need to constantly analyze people’s visits and develop content. We will consider the main points and their improvement after discussing external PFs.

External

As mentioned above, external behavioral - user behavior on the search results page. That is, the visitor entered a certain request into Yandex and is given a response from sites that supposedly should answer his question. And here external behavioral factors come into play.

The main and, perhaps, the only indicator I would highlight is CTR in the search results.

CTR in search results is the click-through rate of your website on the search page. A visitor is presented with many sites when searching for an answer to a query. As a rule, eyes always immediately turn their attention to the first sites, since it is logical that they have a complete, detailed answer.

But, if our site is, for example, in the 7th position for a certain request and the visitor immediately clicks on it, and not on the first resources, then we will get an increase. But this is quite difficult to achieve. How? Again, further.

I will also highlight one more factor that can simultaneously be attributed to both external and internal.

We are talking about an indicator called return to search results. That is, does the user return to the search page to look for an answer to his question after visiting our site.

Agree, if the user received a clear, comprehensive answer to his question, then with a high degree of probability he will no longer search for other sites. I can’t say for sure what the “plus” will be if the search for an answer ends with our site. But, if there is a return to the search results, then this is a sure signal that our page either does not fully respond to the search query, or does not respond to it at all.

So, now I’ll tell you about working tricks on how to improve the behavior of visitors on the site in all respects.

How to improve behavioral factors?

As such, there are no ways to improve each factor separately. Therefore, you need to approach everything comprehensively, which I keep talking about.

Focusing only on each method separately, we will not achieve the desired effect and bad indicators will overlap the good ones.

And in general, there are no ways to improve it. There are no secret tricks that will make visitors behave better on the site. Many people think that by putting similar posts at the end of materials, they will achieve more clicks and so on.

But in essence, improving the PF is only possible by improving the site itself. His concepts in general. There are no secret tricks.

Regarding improving internal factors, remember 3 things:

  1. Content;
  2. Usability;
  3. Design.

Let's look at each point in more detail.

By content I mean many factors:

  • The answer to the question and its completeness - at first glance, the visitor should understand whether he will receive an answer to his question. To do this, write clear headings and write from the first lines what the visitor will learn. Also open the topic completely if necessary and possible;
  • Readability - that is, so that it is convenient to perceive. Its structure is responsible for this. There will be a separate article about this, in which we will look at how to properly format content;
  • Usefulness and interestingness - the more useful and interesting the content, the more time the visitor will spend studying it. Here it is very important to make points to capture attention. The more of them, the more attention to your content and the longer the visit time. To do this, use images, videos, tables, surveys, and so on.

Usability - ease of use of the site. Its structure (location of all elements) and, of course, design are responsible for this. There will also be detailed materials about these elements. Here I will only say that the design should not distract from the content. A website is, first and foremost, content. So don’t make it into something colorful and flashing.

We've sorted out the internal factors. It all comes down to making the site as useful and convenient as possible.

To improve external behavioral factors, you need to work hard on drafting the snippet, since it is the snippet that is responsible for the clickability of the site in the search results.

A snippet is a brief description of a specific page or site as a whole in search results.

The more competently and attractively we compose it, the more clicks there will be. But this snippet must actually display the contents of the page so that the visitor does not immediately close it.

Here are the basic rules for how to create a snippet:

  • Heading - consists of the main keyword with possible additions for attractiveness or tail from a lower frequency query;

For example, if I promote a page for the request “Image optimization”, I can add the phrase “for the site” and then I will get a lower low-frequency request. This page will be visible on more queries and gives a more complete understanding of the article itself. After all, image optimization is a flexible concept.

  • Description is that piece of text that appears under the title. It should display the contents of the page as accurately and fully as possible - this is an ideal description. A text fragment is usually taken from the corresponding field that we fill in when adding a page. It can also be taken from the text on the page itself and this point needs to be worked with;
  • Keyword in the page URL - this parameter does not determine the clickability of the site as much as the previous 2, but by using this point, you can also improve the search conversion rates;
  • Favicon - of course there should be one. And the better it is, the greater the effect.

So, by doing all the above steps, you can significantly improve behavioral factors on the site. There is no need to focus on all sorts of fresh and popular posts in each block of the site. They will have no effect. Yes, no one denies that you will get some additional page views thanks to this functionality, but the main purpose of these gadgets lies a little deeper, which I will talk about in future articles.

So, friends! The following conclusion can be drawn from all of the above.

To improve behavioral factors, we make the site as useful and convenient for people as possible, and then no bounce rates or low time spent on the site will be scary.

In conclusion, another interesting video on behavioral.

This is where I will end this material. If I suddenly forgot something, please correct me. Anything can happen.

Also write your observations and opinions. Let's discuss this interesting topic in website promotion on the Internet.

I'll wrap it up here. See you.

Best regards, Konstantin Khmelev!

Behavioral factors are all user actions on the site:

  • visits to the site;
  • time spent on the site;
  • clicks on links on the site;
  • repeated returns to the site;
  • viewing depth (number of transitions within the site);
  • bounce rate (users leaving the site after viewing one page);
  • page clickability in search results (number of transitions from search engines).

These factors are taken into account by search engines when ranking. Simply put, how active a site’s users are will determine its position in search results to a certain extent. The idea of ​​using behavioral factors in ranking is as simple as possible: provide users with content (articles, videos, music files, pictures, etc.), which has passed a kind of test to ensure it meets expectations. The introduction of behavioral factors into ranking results has improved the quality of web resources, their overall usefulness and competitiveness.

Learn more about behavioral factors and their optimization

  1. Site CTR (click-through rate in search results).
    The more clicks from search engines, the more profitable the site looks in the eyes of the latter. It happens that a site ranked eighth in search results has a higher CRT than the one in first place. It is more useful for users, which means that the search engine can promote it higher in the search results, despite the fact that competitors have more link mass.
    How to optimize?
    Here you need to work with a snippet (a brief description of the site), a title (Title meta tag) and a URL. The correct title is as informative as possible, contains keywords and attracts attention. To create a high-quality snippet, it is recommended to use . With it, the page description will be as informative as possible for users, which will attract their attention, and therefore increase CRT. As for the URL, it should be as clear as possible to the user (CNC). There shouldn’t be any addresses like site.ru/54f?>33/stranica_1.html!
  2. Attendance.
    This is the full volume of resource visitors from all sources (forums, social networks, blogs, bookmarks, thematic sites, as well as direct visits). Here search engines take into account how many people visited the site, and from how many sources.
    How to optimize?
    Everything is simple here: the more channels for attracting users to the site, the better. Therefore, if there is minimal traffic coming from any direction, then this is a signal to start active actions in this direction. Optimizing traffic is the first step to moving users from the “visitors” category to the “buyers” category.
  3. User behavior.
    • Refusals. These are visitors who left the site after viewing one page. The higher this indicator, the worse.
    • Time on site. The time period during which the visitor was on the site pages.
    • View depth. Here, too, everything is quite simple: the more pages the user visited, the more interested he was in the site.
    How to optimize?
    In order to minimize failures and increase the time spent on the site/the number of pages viewed, you should saturate the resource with interesting content and services. If there are no clicks on the links on the pages, this is a “wake-up call”. Search engines may consider such links unnecessary, which can lead to a lower ranking of the site. Internal linking will help solve the problem (about us). Links should be placed in the body of the content (in the text), in the “similar posts” blocks. Links should be as clear as possible for users. If visitors follow the links, the bounce rate will decrease significantly, and the time spent on the site will increase, as will the number of pages viewed. Links to other resources are also necessary: ​​however, if there are no clicks on them, the search engine may consider them “sales”.
    In addition, you should pay attention to the speed of the hosting (page loading time depends on this) and the usability of the site. And finally, you simply need to post only high-quality and unique content that will be useful to users.
  4. Core audience.
    This is a special category of users who visit the site regularly. The frequency of visits can be completely different: once a day or once a week. Such users most often come to the site from bookmarks.
    How to optimize?
    Here we should pay attention Special attention website usability, as well as high-quality and relevant content. Its popularity among users depends on how convenient and understandable a resource is. Agree, even high-quality content will not save a site if it is simply inconvenient to use. Well, high-quality content (text and multimedia) is generally the most important “whale” on which the interest of regular or intending to become regular users rests. You can read about how to properly write articles for people here. At the same time, do not forget about keywords that should be introduced into the text as harmoniously as possible.

Dishonest Methods for Improving Behavioral Factors

Some optimizers prefer not to bother and use special services. Thus, the site userator.ru has gained some popularity. Here, webmasters can, for a certain fee, hire users who will spend enough time on the pages of the desired resource, will go to it using links from other sites and from search engines, and will also be active (view not one, but many pages) .

Is it worth using this method of improving behavioral factors to increase rankings in search results? Well, actually, no one forbids it. But this is just a method of black optimization, which the RIGHT optimizer will disdain to use.

Methods for taking into account behavioral factors

So how do you track behavioral factors? How to understand which aspects of the site’s operation and promotion need to be improved? It's very simple: you need to use one of the statistics tools. Let's look at the most popular one - Yandex.Metrica.

Yandex.Metrica tools:

conclusions

When working on website promotion, do not forget about behavioral factors. After all, the whole point is to make sites meaningful, convenient and useful for users. And the simplest method of solving this problem is observing and analyzing user actions on the site.

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Let me give you an example, let’s say your Internet project is in first place in the search results for the query “sauerkraut recipe”; 2,955 people come to you for this query per month (according to Yandex statistics), and if 2,000 people come to you immediately return to the search (that is, they stayed for less than 15 seconds), then a certain conclusion can be drawn from this.

Conclusion: the majority of users did not find the necessary information from you and your page does not correspond 100% to the request, as a result of which the search engine algorithms, based on the user behavior statistics they collected, will draw a conclusion and lower your blog in the search results, precisely for this request.

Also, search engines collect statistics on behavioral factors in the search results itself; imagine the Yandex results for any query, not all visitors will click on the web resource that is in first place, but will go to an Internet site whose description managed to attract and interest them.

So, if the majority of people in the search results click on the second site, then in a similar way, the search engine algorithms will conclude that the second resource is raised in the search results, and, accordingly, the first one is lowered, but of course the PF on the resource itself will also be taken.

So, search engines evaluate the behavior of visitors both on your Internet site and in their search results, and they keep statistics on this matter.

Statistics are collected on specific requests and they accumulate every day, and over time the PS will draw a conclusion about the quality of the entire web site, and whether people need this site at all!!!

How search engines collect statistics on behavioral factors.

Why do search engines collect statistics of behavioral factors I think you understand, but how do they collect it from each web site?

Well, collecting statistics on behavioral factors in the search results itself is not difficult, but statistics on user behavior on webmasters’ resources is more difficult.

The first and most common method is the offer of the search engines themselves to install a counter on your website to collect user behavior statistics; webmasters themselves can use this statistics.

It’s very convenient to find out how many people came to your blog, where they came from, how much time they spent, how many internal transitions they made, what queries they came from search engines for, and so on, so many webmasters use this offer, and search engines, in turn, use this by collecting statistics on visitor behavior.

At the search engine Google systems there is a Google Analytics counter, and the Yandex search engine offers a Yandex Metrica counter, I talked about how to properly install this analytics tool in the article:, and in the article -, I talked about the important terms that you should know, follow the link there is detailed information video!

By the way, Yandex Metrica provides statistics on clicks on social network buttons, the script for these buttons is also provided by Yandex, in the article: I described in detail how to install them.

Also, user behavior statistics are collected directly from your browsers; many network users have a Yandex bar installed, which sends necessary information search engine Yandex.

There is also an opinion that Yandex uses the statistics of the most popular counter in the RuNet, Liveinternet, I think there is no need to talk about this super-counter, everyone knows about it.

This is how it all happens!

Influence of behavioral factors.

When a user accesses a search, they want a result that is very similar to being selected by a human rather than a robot.

Therefore, search engine algorithms try to imitate humans, and to do this they take a number of measures.

Let's say Yandex uses two technologies to imitate a person, o collecting statistics on behavioral factors I have already said, and in addition to this, there are specialist assessors.

That is, Yandex employs specially trained people who manually evaluate search results pages based on a number of criteria and overall impression.

And so, if any webmaster can manage behavioral factors, then specialists cannot be managed; if they recognize your project as not meeting a specific request, then you will not be able to rise in the search results.

Behavioral factors - types.

At the beginning of the article, I already mentioned some types of user behavior, but now I’ll break it down.

Behavioral factors - types

1. Website clickability in search results.

2. Total site traffic.

Search engines also take into account very important behavioral factor, as the number of visits from different web sites, if you are engaged, then you should have enough transitions from Facebook, Twitter, contact and so on.

And if a lot of users come to you from various Internet sites, then the search engine algorithms will give you another plus.

3. Bounce rate.

This is one of the most important behavioral factors that all search engines take into account.

A refusal is when a user viewed only one page of your resource and left it, that is, he considered that he was not interested in anything else here, I talked about this in detail in the article - by clicking on the link you will learn how to reduce refusals significantly.

Currently, Yandex has reconsidered its attitude to this behavioral factor and considers a refusal to be a visitor to spend less than 15 seconds on your blog, and if he stayed longer than this time, it will not be a refusal.

4. Time the visitor spends on the site.

Also a very important behavioral factor is the time spent on your resource; the more time people spend on your project, the better search engines will treat it, considering that there is a lot of useful information.

Therefore, all webmasters need to, by hook or by crook, manage to keep your guests as long as possible!

5. Number of pages viewed by visitors.

Everything is clear here, the more users walk around your project, that is, they make internal transitions, which means your project is interesting to users.

Usually, various metrics contain information about what percentage of visitors viewed only one page, or two, three, and so on; you need to strive for the visitor to view as much information as possible.

6. Returns to the site.

Search engines take into account new and old visitors, that is, if old readers often return to your project, this will be very good, another plus is provided for you.

Refunds can be arranged by subscribing to new comments on the article and general RSS feeds.

So, from all of the above we can conclude: every webmaster needs to strive to keep users on their Internet site for as long as possible, and force them to make a lot of internal transitions, they need to attract people from other resources and also recruit their regular readers who will be there when they leave new publication will come back to you.

Optimization of behavioral factors, or we keep the visitor on our website.

To begin with, I will say that there are special services, thanks to which you can make very good progress in search engine results! What are they doing, they are just increasing the PF, these are the services:

Be sure to watch the webinar, it shows cases of successful promotion through PF:


Optimizing behavioral factors is very difficult, the webmaster can only try to improve the navigation and offer something interesting.

First, the page the user came to must contain the answer to his question, otherwise he will immediately leave.

Therefore, you need to write and optimize articles for a specific request, that is. This is done firstly in order to rise in the search results for the desired query (which many people are looking for), and so that the page meets the person’s expectations (if you do everything correctly, you will see how your performance improves).

In addition to correctly writing an article for a specific request, it is necessary to correctly format the publication for improvement, so to speak, for ease of reading, follow the link and you will learn how to do this correctly.

Very good way to improve the statistics of behavioral factors is to create a display of articles on similar topics, and create, that is, intelligently offer visitors to read something else.

Internal linking is simply the main point in promoting an Internet resource, and of course in improving the statistics of behavioral factors, if done correctly, you can increase significantly both the number of pages viewed and the time spent on the site, using the link I provided above. I told you how I do linking.

You definitely need to create a site map, it will make it easier for the user to navigate your project, and will certainly improve the behavioral factor, we read about creating a site map on WordPress - and.

You can post some interesting video on your project, preferably a thematic one, to keep people on the page longer.

And of course, you definitely need to take care of returning users to your Internet project; for this you need to organize your own news channel, that is, RSS.

This has already been implemented on the WordPress engine, but not so much on Joomla; how to properly configure RSS on Joomla, read the article:.

But RSS alone is not enough, you need to create a subscription to mailboxes, for this we launch rss through Feedburner.

And of course, set a counter for the number of your subscribers, this will give authority to your project if the number of subscribers exceeds 1000.

It’s just that many users pay attention to the number of subscribers, and if there are a lot of them, then they also think that this resource has a lot of interesting things and automatically subscribe.

I described this whole procedure about the counter and the soap subscription form in the article:

Well I think that's enough talking for today about behavioral factors, we will return to them in other articles.

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    2014-12-26T17:16:00+00:00

    Whatever one may say, behavioral factors + quality content are the two MOST important factors when promoting websites (blogs). And if earlier behavioral ones could be easily and cheaply increased, thereby rising in search engines, now it works exactly the opposite. Search engines have learned to identify natural PFs from artificial ones. And if you still decide to use behavioral ones, then approximately 90% of the time you will receive a filter from search engines. Therefore, you need to write high-quality, unique and useful content; work with the audience (visitors) and promote on social networks.

    2013-12-18T22:04:45+00:00

    Serik, don’t talk nonsense, look at the Yandex metrics web viewer! This is how it monitors, if I see that a visitor was on the page for 3 seconds and left, then the search engine even collects statistics! You are simply not in the subject at all :) Even if the site does not have metrics installed, then everyone has Yandex or Google extensions installed in their browsers, and they transmit the information! but everyone has both metrics and Liv Internet...

    2013-12-18T11:17:04+00:00

    to be honest about the refusals, you wrote nonsense, how can a search engine track how long you were on the site, so you went from a search to any site and spent 3 seconds and went to another resource altogether, it can calculate if the user came from a search and spent 3 seconds on the site and went back to Google search, or if you use Google Chrome, then maybe they are watching, there’s no other way!

    2013-09-03T08:33:00+00:00

    Pavel, thanks for the addition!

    2013-09-03T06:45:53+00:00

    The article is good, with its pros and cons. Let me make my contribution. The main thing that is missing is the conclusion that these factors have a certain “totality” on the basis of which the game of site ranking in the PS takes place. Clickability itself is worth nothing; it’s not for me to tell you that a beautiful title will be of no use if it is hidden behind a sad rewrite. The most important thing in behavioral factors is behavior on the site. Because initially, when the site first appears in the search results, it is the first randomly visiting visitors who form the site’s PF, i.e. The main factors are the time spent on the site and the depth of browsing. Also transitions to the site from bookmarks and direct visits. You can look at this here Click-through rates and links are all cool, but the most important thing is the actions on the site. Although there is a downside - for example, taxi sites. People come to them purely to find out the phone number, and so on with ten to twenty sites... And at the same time, they are also ranked, i.e. as I already said, behavioral factors work together..=)

    2013-06-11T18:06:33+00:00

    Hello, Sergey! Thank you for reading my blog, and for DY :) Always glad to have regular readers! 1) Internal transitions are recorded if the user’s activity on the site is interrupted for more than half an hour, but the user does not close the browser window. After activity resumes, a new user “visit” is created, for which this type will be specified as the source. that is, that “Open in a new window”, that just clicking on a link is the same thing. 2) I often see this picture in Webvisor Metrics! This is certainly very good for the PF site, the Dogs see and appreciate everything. They see that the user has been on one page for a long time, his behavior shows that he reads carefully, then goes to another open tab and reads there for a long time, and so on. Even if the visitor, after reading the article, just briefly looked through these open pages, it's much better when he just read the article and left. 3) In this option, the winner is the site on which the user spends more time (there will not just be an open tab, but the behavior should be exactly that of the person reading - moving the mouse over the text, highlighting part of the text, etc.) and also if he did Follow the links! and if this situation repeats, then the site that constantly wins will rise (of course, it all depends on the request), if LF then it will rise once or twice, but if MF-VK or HF, then other factors are also needed to rise in the results . This is my opinion, which I have verified. Until recently, there was such a program from the megaindex that was installed on the computers of users who exchanged visits to automatic mode for cheating PF, so I managed to try it out! She acted in much the same way, only she quickly closed competitors’ sites, and on the promoted site she made the appearance of reading and a couple of internal transitions. So, low-frequency queries went up once or twice, and competitors went down.

    2013-06-11T12:37:05+00:00

    Hello, Maxim! For some reason I started reading your blog, along with Shakin, Sosnovsky and Ditrius (Who is new). Okay, you write simply and clearly. I know how to thank you - DY :) Tch... Don’t worry, everything is okay and natural, to the minimum :) Maxim, the question of PF has been haunting me for a long time. 1) If the user followed an internal link on a site page to another page of the same site, not as before, classically, but by selecting “Open in a new window” or “Open in a new tab” with the mouse when hovering over the link. What will the Search Engine think about this? Does he consider this the same as a regular transition (just click on a link)? Or does he not count it as an internal transition? 2) And one more thing. From the same opera. Let's say a user is interested in several similar articles, a list of which is displayed at the end of the article. And he took and opened the similar articles he liked from that page, but all in new tabs (well, or windows) of his browser. And then it simply reads them all sequentially, opening already loaded tabs. How will this look in the eyes of the PS, in relation to the PF? Or, the user entered a query into a search engine, received results, and opened, say, 5-7 results (links) in new tabs (windows), and then did everything as described above. What do search engines think about this? Will they consider that the user followed only one link (the one he opened first)? Or how? What is your opinion? And, if so, how can you confirm it? Or is this a guess? What opinions (assumptions) will other visitors to this site have?

    2011-06-27T07:37:45+00:00

    Hello Maxim. It seemed like I had already read a lot about SEO (from the same Shakin), but I’m constantly learning something new from you. A refusal is when a visitor viewed only one page of your site and left it, that is, he felt that he was no longer interested in anything here. I didn’t know about this, how important it is. Well, I knew that it was necessary to retain the visitor for as long as possible, but if the user visited one page and never went anywhere else, this is considered bad by search engines. I'll be waiting for an article on the topic of refusals - but in what future will it be published? In the distant or near (future). And your writing is interesting, it’s very easy and understandable to read. I also wanted to ask - why don’t you give descriptions of the videos? It seems to me that it would be nice to describe it in a nutshell.

The Yandex CIKM2013 report published some Yandex rankings

  • QueryDomCTR - average CTR value of all domain documents for this query
  • QueryUrlCTR - the average CTR value of a specific document for a given query.
  • QDwellTimeDev - standard deviation (deviation) from the average time spent on the document upon request.
  • QDwellTime - the average time a visitor spends on a document upon request.
  • AvSatSteps - the average number of satisfied steps on the site. A satisfied step is following an internal link after 30 seconds of being on the document.
  • AvDwellTime - the total average time a visitor spends on a document for various search queries.
  • DwellTimeDev - standard deviation (deviation) of the time spent on the site.
  • 90thDwellTime is the top decile, also known as the 90th percentile of average time on site.
  • 10thDwellTime is the bottom decile of average time on site.
  • TimeOnDomain - total time spent on the site. For all requests for any documents.
  • CumulativeDev - standard deviation (deviation) from the average time spent on the site

Let's try to figure out what search engines pay attention to first when analyzing behavioral factors.

  • in their personal search results - clickfatcores;
  • on ranked resources - post click factors.

CTR is the ratio of the number of user transitions to a certain resource to the number of views of information about it provided to the client in search results. This information consists of title, snippet and url. It should be that the higher this number, the more interesting the resource seems and, accordingly, it should rank higher in the search results. However, everything cannot be simple here, since sites that rank first in the TOP will constantly have a higher CTR.

Perhaps this behavioral factor can lead to many resources with a clumsy title or snippet disappearing from the TOP. Probably, the methods for increasing this indicator will be the same for all resources without exception.

How can you improve behavioral factors in search results?

Factors that affect CTR are:

  • Having an interesting title. It must at the same time attract the reader, encouraging him to switch to this page site, and at the same time contain keywords. Accordingly, in order to increase behavioral factors on the site, look at the title you have written from the point of view of a simple user. Would YOU like to click on such a link?
  • Constantly working on snippets, looking for methods to influence their content.
  • CNC settings. They should highlight keywords that are present in the URL of the site page. Some experts believe that this method helps improve behavioral factors by about five percent.

There is an opinion that search engines take into account such user actions as returning back to search engine results after going to a specific resource page. Perhaps, in combination with other indicators, this indicates that a certain site is uninteresting to the visitor. So, after some time after constant user returns to search results, this resource will be lowered in the TOP. However, we should not forget that all behavioral factors are taken into account as a whole.

Such actions by a site visitor can be provoked by the fact that this resource is optimized for a specific request, for example, by purchasing links. However, the essence of the required question (request) on the landing page of the resource was not disclosed or was not disclosed sufficiently. It is important that search query corresponded exactly to the content on the site page to which it leads the user, that is, it was as targeted as possible. Otherwise, as a result of the PF analysis, such a site at some point will still be kicked out of the TOP of search results due to requests that do not correspond to the content of the site page to which they brought the visitor.

In simple terms: Improving the behavioral factors on your website starts with taking a deep dive into the page. does it match the request? Will the user find what they are looking for?

How do search engines analyze user behavior and what do they pay attention to?

Naturally, search engines Yandex and Google can take from their personal search results all the information they need regarding the behavioral factor of visitors. However, on custom projects their capabilities are somewhat limited. But their search bots successfully cope with this task, so we have no choice but to guess how they manage to do this.

So, how do search engines analyze user behavior on a particular resource?

    Metrica counters provided by Yandex have quite extensive and useful functionality. In addition, they are free, which is very pleasing and attractive. I wonder why Yandex is so generous? Perhaps because when installing counters on any site, Yandex has the ability to receive the information it needs to rank this site based on user behavioral factors? Well, the statement is quite justified!

    Also, continuing the logical chain of thoughts, we can come to the conclusion that some applications are possible best browsers, like Bar (Elements) for Mazila from Yandex, Google panel, Opera and Chrome, as well as the Alexa toolbar, may collect data about the behavior of visitors who use these applications on websites.

    There are also various free services(in large quantities), which are represented by attendance counters, and free of charge. But why are they doing this? What benefit will they have if someone installs these counters on their resource? Perhaps a backlink? However, it looks too simple, so there is probably more to it. It's no secret that if one Internet player has what another needs, then they will definitely find a common language. So let's move on...

There is a hypothesis that for a fee, liveinternet (LI) counters leak data on resource traffic to Yandex Rambler Top 100. If we take into account that Rambler currently uses the Yandex engine for search, then we can quite assume that they closely cooperate in the field of accounting behavioral factors of users when ranking. How to improve behavioral factors on the site? Delete all counters! Joke.

Of course, a lot more can be invented and substantiated, but this is also enough to understand that the behavior of users on any site for Yandex and Google, to a certain extent, cannot be a secret.

Not all Internet users are Yandex members who receive monetary rewards for rating a specific resource on many parameters. Since they are not paid for this, Yandex needs to decide for itself how to understand the actions of visitors, using all its power and the unique logic of programmer thought. In addition, the same user behavior in different cases can be interpreted differently - what is good in one case may be bad in another.

What behavioral factor can be taken into account by search engines?

  1. Probably, such factors simply cannot be counted. But most worth attention characteristic – the number of percentage failures. The bounce rate is the ratio of sessions with unit depth when the entry point is similar to the exit point. Everything is simple here: if you want to observe an increase in behavioral factors, do everything to prevent the user from abandoning the page.
  2. Perhaps the PF is also affected by session time, that is, the time that the user spends on a certain resource. It is counted until the browser is closed or until pages are opened for more than half an hour.
  3. The depth of attendance should also be taken into account. The depth of traffic depends on the number of pages viewed by the user in one visit.
  4. Also, search engines may take into account the volume of traffic, as well as its sources for a particular resource. Thus, the robot will record an improvement in behavioral factors on the site if visitors come to a certain resource not only from search results, but also from social networks and browser bookmarks.

There are no questions regarding the last point, but the first three seem ambiguous. Thus, the duration of a user session, for example, in an online store for delivery of pizza to order, can be quite short, and the bounce rate will be close to 100%. That is, the user entered the site page and immediately left, since the phone number by which you can order pizza is written on the first page. The visitor saw it, wrote it down and immediately left to make a call. However, the store website is well-promoted, has many visitors and is ranked well in Yandex.

Let's take as an example news portal or blog. As a rule, such a resource is of little interest to the visitor, so the site has a high failure rate, which can deprive it of a large amount of traffic from search engine results.

Therefore, we can assume that for an online store selling pizza with delivery, a low bounce rate will be regarded by search engines as a bad behavioral factor, since users who want to order pizza spend a very long time looking for the right one. phone number Online. In this case, the position of this site will be slightly lower in search engine results. However, it is unlikely that such a decision will be made based on the characteristics of only one indicator. The totality of all factors must be taken into account.

Therefore, improving the behavioral factors of an online store website or food delivery should begin with an analysis of the resource itself: is the phone visible, is there a description under the picture, are all the terms of purchase indicated on the page, and so on. Just imagine that you are a buyer and look at your site through their eyes.


Optimizing Behavioral Ranking Factors

The desire of search engine developers to make search results more useful for users is quite understandable, since this is their direct task. But it is obvious that algorithms that use only dry numbers of parameters for ranking are not suitable for this. Therefore, search engines, in addition to the quality of content and incoming links, began to take a closer look at user behavior.

How do search engines work with behavioral factors? How does Yandex spy on users and find out their preferences? The first thing a search engine takes into account is in the results. If three times more users choose the eighth result than everyone else, then this is a direct hint that it is more relevant to the query. Therefore, a search engine can raise such a result to a higher position, despite all the merits of other sites in the form of links and other factors.

Yandex also actively uses its services - mainly the Yandex.Metrica statistics system. It provides a huge amount of data that provides signals for assessing how users feel about pages. For example, the time spent on a particular page can tell a lot - it is obvious that they like pages from which users immediately leave less than those on which they stay for a long time.

In addition, there is reason to believe that an add-on for Yandex.Bar is used to collect information about user behavior. This fact has not been officially confirmed, but according to many experts, such “espionage” takes place.

Methods for taking into account behavioral factors How can a website owner evaluate in order to understand in which direction his own resource needs to be improved? For this purpose, one of those tools that search engines themselves use is suitable - statistics systems. Let's look at how they work using the example of Yandex.Metrica, which is familiar to every optimizer.

This service has a special “Behavior” tab, where using a web viewer you can monitor the actions of visitors in video format.


Yandex.Metrica gives us the following important information:
Ways to improve behavioral factors It’s logical to start optimizing behavioral factors from the moment users first interact with your website – from appearance links in the search engine results, that is, from the snippet. We have already written about this in detail in, and on our SeoPult.TV channel you can watch a video report by Alexander Shubin, the head of two search services Yandex, about the principles of snippet formation.

So, in order to create a snippet that is attractive to users, you need to understand by what principles the search engine forms it. If previously for a snippet, Yandex took text from the contents of the Title and Description, now the basis can be any fragment of text with a keyword. If the search engine has chosen an unsuccessful phrase, you can try to redo it in the text without changing the total number of keywords.

If the theme of your site allows you to use semantic markup, then you should definitely use it - if you use the Schema.org standard correctly, you are guaranteed an excellent snippet. You can read more about microdata in

Try to make the traffic more diverse. Use social media, forums, blogs. Let the share of transitions from these sources be small, but in this way the traffic will become more heterogeneous, and therefore more natural.

To keep a user on the site, in addition to publishing interesting and informative things, you need to be smart and use a creative approach. Anything can be appropriate here – from design features to useful services. An example is a tire calculator for selecting wheels on websites selling wheels or gearbox calculation programs for tuning enthusiasts. Successful solutions often end up in users’ bookmarks.


An interesting video or even a small flash game can help keep the user on the page longer.

It will also be a plus to include links in the text to other pages in those places where they are really needed for the convenience of visitors (don’t forget that such links should not harm it!). Blocks with similar posts or products will also help make the user spend more time on your site, and this is another coin in the treasury for optimizing behavioral factors.