User Behavior Data That Affects Search Engine Rankings

Have you wondered how Google knows how to give you the best suggestions in the SERPs? Well, here we’ll discuss this at length and talk more about an essential metric that you may forgo when optimizing your website – user behavior data.

As we’ve talked about the changes in the search engine algorithms (read Google algorithm), you probably know about the major changes that happened over time. Now ranking depends on the user behavior data and relevant keywords, tags, and Meta descriptions.

We are not saying the time of the keywords has passed because proper keywords are needed now more than ever. We are talking about how the user’s behavior affects the search, bringing us to the conclusion that it is not only the keyword they use you need to think about but also the user’s intent.

Understanding your users and their online behavior is critical in ranking and staying high in the search engine rankings and building your brand. Read on as we discuss how you can collect user behavior data and how to use it to improve your rankings.

What Is User Behavior Data?

User behavior data or user behavior metrics is an amount of info that shows how a user interacts with your page. The official definition for user behavior data is straightforward: this is the data generated by or in response to a customer’s engagement with a business (or a website in this aspect).

The data provided by user behavior analytics is crucial to understanding how your visitors interact with your website. By carefully studying the user behavior data, you can grasp how visitors interact with your website, what content attracts them the most, what brings them to your website, and which pages engage them the most.

A while back, Google started using the user behavior data in page rankings, as this metric truly indicates what pages are relevant to the user’s search. As Google continues to find new ways of improving user experience, it works on finding ways to include user behavior to judge what is relevant to the users.

To find your user behavior data, you need to log into your Google Analytics profile, where you will see all the pertinent user-generated metrics. From here, you will also gain in-depth insight into what works on your website and what needs changing.

Essential User Metrics

While Google gathers and analyzes a staggering amount of data about its users, there are three essential metrics that you need to keep track of to improve the ranking of your website. Here these are:

• Click-through rate
• Time on page
• Bounce rate

Click-through Rate

It is no secret that Google collects and stores user information. Among the primary metrics Google collects is the click-through rate (CTR) of search results. The click-through rate is the ratio of the number of times a SERP result is clicked to the number of times it was displayed. There is no universally accepted good or bad CTR, as this number depends on many factors that you cannot control.

The formula for calculating CTR is simple: CTR = clicks/impressions

Of course, the top-rated listings get the highest CTR rates, and the first five listings get about 67% of all clicks. The CTR impacts which page ranks the higher, as Google considers each click as a vote of confidence for the particular page. Because of all the displayed results, the one they clicked is the best match for their search.

Also, the more clicks a page gets, Google considers it a more relevant result to the user’s search. You can see why CTR plays a vital role in ranking a website and why you need to keep track of this user behavior metric.

How To Improve CTR?

Even though not apparent at first, there are ways you can improve the CTR of your website. In some cases, websites note an improvement in CTR by simply changing the call-to-action text from a more technical to a more user-friendly copy.

However, the best way to improve CTR is to optimize your content to the max and beyond. By optimizing each part of your website, you improve the chances of ranking high in the SERPs. With this, you increase the chances for a better CTR. This, in turn, will “tell” Google that your website is relevant to the searched keyword/topic.

It would be best if you thought of SEO when looking to improve CTRs. Think of keywords, and instead of optimizing a single keyword, you should create a keyword cluster, optimize several relevant phrases, and provide the visitor with what they are after.

Pro tip: Optimize every page of your website regularly – change titles, meta descriptions, build links with on-point anchor text, and constantly update your content, as users don’t want to see stale content. Don’t forget technical SEO, as it also plays a vital role in ranking high on the SERPs.

Meta descriptions are another vital part that attracts visitors and improves CTRs. The meta descriptions provide a short overview of what the visitor will see when they click on your link. This is only some advice on how you can improve the CTR of your website, and we’ll cover this in more detail in a future article.

Time On Page

It is self-explanatory – time on page is the average time a user spends on a page. It provides insight into the content of a page – if the user spends a lot of time on the page, they find the content relevant, and if they spend only a short amount of time on the page, they don’t find it relevant or appealing.

How To Improve Time On Page

To improve the average time users spend on your page, you should consider adding interactive elements to your website that will attract users’ attention. These elements can include fascinating images, on-point videos, an excellent FAQ section, and the like.

It would help if you always aimed to provide a wholesome experience for your users, so they will be tempted to spend a lot of time browsing your content. Take a closer look at your website, note what may be lacking, are there too many elements, check if everything is on topic.

Having attractive, on-point content is the best way to keep your user’s attention. If you feel that your content does not resonate with the message you are looking to convey, it would be best to remove it from your website before it adversely affects your on-page time.

Pro tip: An interactive page will always be attractive to visitors. Still, you should focus on your end goal, and if it is lead generation, then use all means necessary to entice users to convert them to leads.

Of course, there are some pages that don’t require a long time on a page. So, before you go and start making changes to all your pages, first consider the type of page that has a low time on page. For example, if your landing page has very optimized content and easy to find, appealing CTA, it may mean that users find it quickly, thus spending little time on that exact page.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a specific measure that gives the percentage of visitors who visited your site without visiting any other pages on your website. It is another important metric that provides user behavior data to help you improve your rankings.

To better understand this, for example, if your bounce rate is 80%, it means that 80% of your visitors only visit that one page and don’t click anything else on your website, no menus, no links, and no other interaction with your content.

It may indicate that the users don’t find your content relevant to their search or that your content is not engaging enough. In any case, to improve your rankings, you need to work on reducing the bounce rate.

How To Improve Bounce Rate?

There are some tricks you can apply that can positively affect your bounce rate. First and foremost, the user needs to be certain that they’ve got the right page. To do this, you should consider using clear headers and have easily digestible content. Your website should also have interactive elements like video, images, infographics, and other visually appealing elements, to keep user’s attention and reduce bounce rate.

Pro tip: Use descriptive subheadings, short paragraphs, and bullets. People like to grasp the general idea without exerting too much effort, so your content should be skimmable, and the main points should stand out, preferably in bold or another color text.

People’s attention span gets shorter, so they will not wait for a page to load. The average wait is 4 seconds, so if your page is not loaded in this timeframe, then you’ll see a high bounce rate. Ensure all your images are optimized to the correct size and not using redirects, as these two factors strongly affect bounce rate.

When we are speaking of reducing bounce rates, you need to make sure your website is optimized for mobile use. Google gives an advantage to websites optimized for mobile use, as close to 55% of all global internet traffic is done via mobile devices. So, expect a higher bounce rate if your website is not mobile-friendly – people don’t like to browse a slow, not-mobile-friendly site on their smartphones.

Conclusion

As we’ve shown above, user behavior data plays an integral part in the search engine rankings of your website. We need to point out that you should never try to manipulate the user behavior data, as Google will find out and you are risking getting blacklisted. Instead, follow our advice on improving your website and content and having better organic reach, using your current user behavior data as a guideline to improve your website’s ranking.