- Main Types of Behavioral Factors
- Methods of BF Analysis
- The Display of BF
- BF Improvement
- BF Boosting
- Conclusion
A set of metrics related to user behavior on a website are known as behavioral factors (BF). Search engines take BF into account to assess the site’s quality. Page view time, average time on site, and bounce rate are the three basic types of BF.
Main Types of Behavioral Factors
Behavioral factors can be external and internal. Clickability and response satisfaction are examples of external behavioral characteristics. Clickability reveals the site’s relevance to the search and the quality of the search engine snippet. Response satisfaction considers the quality of the content, usability, and how well the pages match search queries.
Internal variables consist of:
- depth of view (the number of pages viewed in one session);
- traffic (the number of visitors and pages viewed);
- time on site (the amount of time the user spent on a site in one session);
- bounce rate (the number of users who left the site);
- scroll depth (determines at which point users leave the page);
- social interaction (measured by the number of shares (reposts) on Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin).
Methods of BF Analysis
Google Analytics, web browsers, specialized browser programs, and extra services are used to analyze behavioral factors.
Google Analytics 4 uses the following reports:
- A report online. Displays user behavior on the website pages online, including traffic channels, content used, etc.
- Traffic channels. Shows the channels from which the site’s traffic is coming.
- Engagement. Views, scrolling, balance checks, and other user actions are monitored.
- Retention. Specifies the frequency of user interaction with the site after the first visit.
The Display of BF
The following behavioral characteristics are displayed on the website:
- Rejection. The user navigates away from the home page without viewing the content. Poor visual design, a lack of topical information, and an unclear structure are the main causes of rejection.
- Depth of view. This represents how many pages were viewed in a single session. It is important to consider the amount of time spent on the site and the number of pages seen. You must enhance the site’s usability and design to improve this factor.
- Returns. The user returns to the search engine. This can be brought on by insufficient relevance of the home page. To make things right, the website’s structure should be improved, and comprehensive information on the topic of interest should be provided.
- Direct hits. Shows the site’s ongoing target demographic. The more visitors will visit the pages of the site, the higher will be its ranking. To increase the number of hits, the information should be constantly updated depending on the thematic focus.
BF Improvement
You must adhere to certain recommendations in order to improve behavioral factors:
- Clickability of snippets. Several techniques are used to make the snippet more clickable, including quick links (generated by Google automatically), making the Title and Description more appealing (by adding keywords, UTP, and emoji), micro-markup (which lets you display the snippet’s address, phone number, and rating), and favicon (allows you to highlight the site in search results).
- Loading speed. The site visitor wants information as soon as they arrive. According to studies, more than 40% of visitors will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. You can modify the code, use advanced image formats, and use asynchronous loading of material to increase loading speed. Google PageSpeed Insight is used to check the loading speed.
- Mobile-first. Google gives the site’s mobile version greater consideration. The Mobile First Index technique is used to evaluate the usability of mobile resources. The site should optimize lazy loading of material, verify the JS and CSS files, examine content compliance with the mobile version of the site, evaluate picture quality, and perform diagnostics on the mobile version of the site in order to become ready for Mobile First Index.
- Snippets. It is advised to employ snippets containing numbers, emojis, and bold characters to increase clickability. The two parts of a snippet are the title and description. Using micro-markup, an extended snippet can be obtained. It includes product price, rating and other details.
- Promotion on social media. By using social networks to access the site, behavioral characteristics can be enhanced. It is advised to do SMM promotion and add social media buttons to the website.
- Eliminate irrelevant queries. Make sure the website is showing up for relevant keywords. Serpstat is used to determine whether the service is relevant.
- Improving usability. The website should be made more user-friendly. It is important to construct a clever structure with an appealing design and to incorporate unique characteristics (e.g. online calculators or visualizers).
- A/B testing. Used to decide which headline is clickable. Might be carried out via Google Analytics or particular WordPress plugins.
- Emoji. The use of bright emoji in the descriptions of pages in the search engine will allow the site to stand out from competitors. Emojis can be colorful or in black and white. Analyzing competitors is desirable to ensure their effective use.
BF Boosting
The site may employ artificial links to enhance the behavioral factors. You could employ unique scripts to simulate user behavior. The site’s search engine rating may rise as a result of BF boosting. In the long term, though, it might result in penalties from search engines. If penalties are enforced, you ought to stop manipulating BF.
Conclusion
The positioning of a website in search engines can be impacted by behavioral factors. The click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, average time site, and returns to search engine results all have an impact on the site’s rating. BF tracking involves the use of specialized tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. It is vital to boost the site’s loading speed, use quality material, and improve usability in order to improve BF.
