If any of these elements is missing, then it is unlikely that you will be able to bring your site to the top. These are the three most important fundamental things for a website.

1. History of the emergence of behavioral factors

The influence of behavioral factors on ranking in Yandex was first noticed at the end of 2010. At that time, only a small part of optimizers knew about this and could easily bring any site to the top without purchasing links. At that time, many did not even believe that there were other ranking factors, since then links ruled more than ever. Everyone bought them in mass quantities.

In the spring of 2011, many people already knew about behavioral factors, so cases of their cheating became more frequent. Yandex could not look at all this with eyes closed, so in the summer of 2011 I introduced a special filter that removed sites from the top with inflated behavioral factors for 2-3 months. This is where the “free” opportunity to promote the site to the top ends. After this, the PF steel is much more carefully approached.

2. List of behavioral factors

What characteristics/metrics are included in the list of behavioral factors? This is the stuff of rumors and legends in the SEO world. Let's look at what most likely influences and what can be measured in user behavior.

2.1. Average time on site

The average time on site is considered one of important indicators PF. Essentially, this value shows how long the visitor was on the resource. However, a long time is not always a good indicator. But most often, the more time a visitor spends on the site, the better.

This indicator can be easily tracked through Metrica (a counter from Yandex).

Note

There are times when a user opened a tab and went about his business (for example, he received a call or another tab was active). The time counter is running, but in fact it is “fake”. Search engines know these nuances and naturally such time will not be taken into account in positive side, despite the fact that the metric will show 10 minutes spent on one page. For a detailed analysis of behavior, it is worth analyzing data from Webizor ( Full description single user session).

2.2. Bounce Rate

5.5. Statistics analysis

Install Yandex Metrica on your website and see after a while how the user behaves on your website. Perhaps in places where the user exhibits greatest activity (big number clicks) it’s worth putting some useful links.

Analyzing the metric, find those pages where the bounce rate is high. Next, you should work with the content on this page, or add some links to other similar topics, etc. What exactly to change needs to be thought and decided by you. The main thing is that something needs to be done with such pages, since they spoil the site’s reputation.

A site with bad behavioral factors will not be able to stay in the top search results for long. Therefore, work on the site, try to make it user-friendly.

Hello, dear blog readers and subscribers. Everyone knows that there is such a ranking factor as behavioral factors. There is a lot of debate on the Internet about how behavioral factors are taken into account, and how the search engine ranks sites based on user behavior data on the site.

I decided to thoroughly understand this topic so that in the future neither I nor my readers would have questions or disputes on this topic. In this article I will look at behavioral factors in the Yandex search engine.

So what are behavioral ranking factors?

Behavioral factors is a ranking factor for websites in search engines. The assessment of behavioral factors consists of various points, such as the clickability of the snippet in the search results, user behavior on the site, failure rate, page viewing time, subject matter and purpose of the site.

I'll start with the fact that search engines Now they understand, if not everything, then a lot. For the Yandex search engine, it is not difficult to track where the user came from, what pages he visited, where he moved the mouse and clicked, how much time he spent on each page, etc. Yandex can take all this data from Metrica, its browser, from various browser extensions and its tools, such as site search, Yandex Maps, etc.

I think it doesn't take a genius to understand that any average programmer can easily develop an algorithm for assessing behavioral factors. Can you imagine what kind of minds work at Yandex? Programmers with average knowledge are definitely not hired there. If the “average” programmer can develop an algorithm, then what can we say about professionals.

Yandex has long had in its arsenal an algorithm for assessing behavioral factors. And if earlier this algorithm was not given much importance, then since last year after the effect decreased link ranking, behavioral factors have become the main ranking factor for Yandex.

What influences behavioral factors

No one except Yandex representatives will give you all the methods for assessing behavioral factors. But of course they keep it a secret. Among the main assessment factors are the following:

• CTR of the snippet in the search results;
• Rejection rate;
• Viewing time;
• User behavior on the site;
• User return;
• Subject and purpose of the site;

Let's look at each of these points in more detail so that you have a complete picture.

CTR of the snippet in the search results. CTR is the ratio of impressions to click-through rate. Let's imagine a situation where the user entered the query " cellular telephone nokia 105 ds black.” There are two sites in the TOP search results. In first place is the online store Technopoints, in second place is Eldorado.

Which snippet do you think will get more clicks? Based on whose brand is cooler and more recognizable. IN in this case This is Eldorado. This is a good signal to the search engine that users trust the second site more and it needs to be increased in the search results.

Rejection rate. The bounce rate is directly affected by the design and usability of the site, as well as the relevance and relevance of the page content. If a user lands on a site from a search and sees a terrible blue background with black letters and some kind of banner jumps out onto the floor of the screen, then the probability that the user will immediately close the site is 99.9%. Do you think Yandex will rank such a site highly? Never.

It may also be that the user entered a query that interests him into the search, and in the search results, among 10 sites, yours is in first place. The user visited your site, viewed the page, but did not find the answer to his question. He returns to the search and begins visiting other sites in the search results one by one until he finds the answer to his question. He finds the answer only on the third site. This is a signal that the competitor’s site should be increased in search results on this issue.

Watching time. Watching time is the biggest behavioral misconception. This parameter influences behavioral factors, but its influence is minimal and can be ignored altogether.

The reason is simple, the user is looking for an answer to a question. Having found the answer, he will leave the site in any case. The creators of the algorithm understand this very well.
User behavior on the site. If we look at Webvisor, we can track user behavior in video format. Yandex can see the same thing.

The search engine can understand whether it is convenient for the user to move around the site, whether the information is conveniently presented, where attention is most often focused, where people click most often, and much more.

You can watch this video from Yandex representative Ekaterina Gladkikh, which clearly shows that Yandex algorithms perfectly understand user behavior on the site, and it will not be difficult for them to determine the cheating of behavioral factors. At the sixth minute of the video it’s absolutely amazing :)

Returning users. If the site is interesting, they will bookmark it, subscribe and return to it again. Yandex sees this perfectly well and takes it into account when assessing behavioral factors.

Subject and purpose of the site. All of the above factors are directly related to the theme and purpose of the site. For example, let’s take an entertainment website and an online store. Naturally, an entertainment site will have a greater viewing depth. People go to entertainment sites to have an interesting time, and to an online store for the specific purpose of buying a product.

It’s the same with information sites. On them, users can spend even several tens of minutes on one page, reading information, watching videos, then go to linked articles that complement the information, and perhaps read information about the author. The same cannot be said about commercial sites. On commercial sites, the user visits a page with a product or service, after getting acquainted, looks for a review page, and if everything suits him, he goes to the cart. He is not interested in the history of the company and its news. He pursues a specific goal.

The conclusion follows from this. You cannot compare all types of sites. If for one site a failure rate of 20% is the norm, then for another it is a reason to think about usability.

I will finish writing here. In the following articles I will tell you about the filter for cheating behavioral factors and what methods can be used to improve behavioral factors.

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What behavioral site ranking factors do Yandex and Google use? What behavioral factors influence the ranking of sites in Yandex and Google? Hi all! Today we’ll talk about behavioral website ranking factors. Let's discuss behavioral factors in the search engines Yandex and Google. These search engines, in my opinion, react slightly differently to the behavior of visitors to the site. Let's figure out what behavioral factors are and what factors are taken into account by the search engines Yandex and Google.

Behavioral website ranking factors are how people react to your website. It consists of many indicators, such as snippet clickability, site clicks, time spent on your site, clicks on links on the site, comments on the site, returns to the site, bookmarking your resource, clicks from social media. networks, likes, reposts, etc.
There is a category of people who try to deceive the search engines Yandex and Google by cheating behavioral factors.
Even you and I can see whether your blog has been cheated or not. Even 10 years ago artificial intelligence was very highly developed.
Have you ever played computer games?
It's not easy to beat the computer, right?
This was a long time ago, imagine what algorithms are now embedded in the search engines Yandex and Google.
Therefore, I believe search engines see whether your site is interesting to visitors or not.
Let's look at all the behavioral factors of website ranking in the Yandex and Google search engines.

• Snippet clickability in Yandex and Google. If your site is ranked 5th in search engines, and people click on it. This is a signal to the Yandex and Google search engines that your site should be ranked higher.
• Time spent on the site by visitors. In general, there are many misconceptions about this. Some say 15 seconds, some say 30 seconds spent on your visitor community is enough for you to be counted as a transition. My opinion is that search engines take into account behavioral factors of the site and not time, i.e. They care about activity on the site. It also happens that a visitor spends an hour on one page without performing any activity.
  I stupidly opened the page and went on a walk, an hour later I picked up and closed your page. Meanwhile, Yandex metrics shows 0 activity. In general, of course, if people come to you and immediately close it, this tells the Yandex and Google search engines that either your site is of poor quality, or this page does not correspond search query. This factor negatively affects the ranking of your site in Google and Yandex.
• Returns visitors to your site. If people subscribe to your site and leave them in bookmarks, Yandex and Google will definitely notice this. Your site is interesting and will be ranked higher than competitors.
• Comments on the blog. It has a very positive effect on the promotion of your site. Some are even ready to sacrifice the weight of the page in the eyes of search engines in order for their blog or site to be actively commented on.
  Below I will tell my story on this factor.
• User transitions from social media networks. It has a positive effect on the ranking of the page and the site as a whole. Another thing is that these transitions are usually not of high quality. I'll give you my example. I have a group in contact, and when I post it, it means a thematic post, a very thematic post! What do you think? There are transitions, but low activity, time spent on this page is 5 - 40 seconds. Whereas, when you go to this page from Yandex search, this indicator is from 40 seconds to 7 minutes with good activity with visits up to 14 times! the same user to this page. In general, something needs to be improved in VK... They love freebies on VKontakte), but they’re too lazy to even read the page to the end).
• Differences in the themes of the sites. Everything is simple here; each topic has its own indicators of click-throughs and bounce rates. Commercial sites. It is clear that if a person goes to a child for a doll, he is looking for a certain model. Try not to please your child? Weak?!), yes to me). This means that the viewing depth of the site will be 1 page. For the entertainment theme of the site, the indicators are completely different.

Let's now look at how Yandex and Google react to behavioral factors and how this affects the site's ranking. Let's start with Yandex.

I would call the behavioral factors of Yandex ranking as liberalism.
In my opinion, Yandex is generally alien to any kind of optimization. Yandex responds very responsively to behavioral factors.
Let's look at this with examples.
I have a page on this site that is in the top Yandex.
In Google this page is in the top 30). Moreover, it is clear that Google indexed it much earlier.
In Yandex, she began to rank in the top almost immediately.
The most interesting thing is that this page is only 43% relevant to the search query!
How did she hook Yandex?

There are two reasons.
1. New information for the Yandex search engine.
I looked at the sites ranked in the top for this request, the information on these pages is completely different, i.e. uniqueness worked.
2. From the very beginning, visitors started coming to this page and left comments.
Yandex did not miss these moments.

Second example. I wrote a post, published it, and it just so happened that it received clicks and comments, there was a thematic link on the H2 header, and there were several clicks on it.
What do you think, how does Yandex react to this?
Where did this page end up in the Yandex ranking?
Right! In the top 10, despite the fact that this site is young, that page is fresh, the request is quite competitive.
Those. ignoring all factors of optimization, relevance, TIC, trust, this page is ranked very highly by Yandex.
Over time, this page actually slipped into the top 40), but that’s another story.
Let's consider behavioral factors google rankings.

Behavioral Google Ranking Factors

If I assessed the behavioral ranking factors of Yandex as liberal, then Google is conservative.
Although Yandex and Google are the two best search engines.
Relevance and site optimization are important to Google.
Google did not react in any way to the examples that I described above for Yandex.
I didn’t notice any increase in the ranking of the site from Google.
Yes, slowly but surely the posts of this site are starting to rank higher in search engines. google system.
The only one interesting fact that Google can translate words and your post can get to the top for a completely incomprehensible request.
That's all for me.
Have you had any interesting behavioral factors that caused your page to rank highly?

What are behavioral ranking factors and how do they affect website SEO optimization in Yandex and Google? Where do search engines get data about PF? List of 26 Behavioral Ranking Factors: How to Improve Them? Is it possible to increase the PF or pessimize a competitor’s website? Read more about everything in this article.

When generating results, search engines are guided by , which are used in algorithms for determining the quality of sites and their relevance to search queries. Some of the most significant SEO factors are behavioral ranking factors.

What are site behavioral factors?

Behavioral Ranking Factors is a set of parameters that determine the relevance of a page to a search query, based on the actions of site users, their profile and history of interaction with search. These parameters are used in search ranking algorithms.

Behavioral factors play a role today important role in the process of determining the relevance of sites, however, their contribution cannot be assessed quantitatively. Firstly, search engines do not comment on information and do not disclose site ranking factors and their weight in the overall ranking formula. Secondly, there are a large number of other factors that also affect the issue. These can be domain, link, commercial factors etc.

Behavioral factors reflect the visitor's engagement and interest in the content presented on the page. Modern SEO optimization does not seem to be effective without working on these indicators, the usability of interfaces, and the quality of content.

The influence of behavioral factors on SEO

It’s worth starting with the fact that behavioral factors cannot be considered in abstraction from other ranking factors. For example, technical factors such as low speed site performance or the presence of broken internal links can significantly reduce browsing depth. Server unavailability or unoptimized images for people with unstable internet may cause problems in displaying content on the site, which in turn may increase the bounce rate. Low-quality content and uninteresting text will most likely provoke the user to leave for another site.

The high degree of dependence of user factors on the quality of the site, as well as the difficulty of artificially influencing them, made these factors one of the most significant in determining the relevance of search results. About 10-15 years ago, text and link ranking factors had a high priority in search algorithms. The simplicity of their definition led to artificial markups: mass purchase external links, re-optimizing texts with keywords. Naturally, the influence of these factors decreased, pessimistic ranking algorithms appeared, such as Baden-Baden and Minusinsk, which lowered sites in search results for search spam and unnatural link mass.

Since 2014, Yandex has naturally announced an increase in the influence of behavioral ranking factors in determining the relevance of pages, and a corresponding decrease in the influence of external links. The search engine said that the priorities in the updated algorithm, that is, those that have greater weight in the general ranking formula, are behavioral factors, which are based primarily on the quality of content, usability and user experience of interaction with the search engine and the site.

Where do search engines get data on PF?

Before moving on to the list of behavioral ranking factors, let's look at the sources from which search engines obtain data on web resources.

1. Analytics systems. Almost every website today has a Yandex.Metrica statistics counter installed or Google Analytics. Providing webmasters free tool analysts and search engines receive in return a colossal amount of data that is used for ranking.
2. Browsers. Search engines spend a lot of money on developing and advertising their own browsers for a reason. This is another source of information about the user profile and its interaction with sites, which allows you to make your search better.
3. Browser extensions like Yandex.Bar can transmit data about user interaction with search to search engines.
4. Search engine services. Data from Google Search Console, Google Plus, Yandex.Webmaster, Zen, Directory and other search engine services may be taken into account in determining the relevance of sites.
5. Other software And software, one way or another controlled by search engines. For example, PuntoSwitcher, purchased by Yandex, can provide search data about user typos. This information can be used in determining vital vadaka.

About user experience interaction with search companies Internet memes are already being formed:

As they say, there is some truth in every joke. Modern search engines can take a personalized approach to creating a user profile, based on data from his interaction with various services and applications.

List: 26 Behavioral Ranking Factors

Let's look at a list of behavioral ranking factors that today can significantly influence your site's position in search, both for the better and for the worse:

Cheating of behavioral factors is an artificial imitation of user actions on the site. It is designed to increase browsing depth, time on the site, reduce the bounce rate and affect other parameters that affect the ranking of sites. Today, optimizers either develop their own software or use third party services by boosting the PF.

We consider both ways of artificially influencing search results to be unpromising. 4-5 years ago, these tools could work, however, later search engines began to be pessimistic or completely exclude resources from search results for such fraud. User factors themselves are complex and non-linear indicators, the effectiveness of which greatly depends on the topic, user profile, browsing history, type of resource and many other factors. Objectively, existing services linearly wind up the most accessible factors in fairly primitive ways that are easy to track. In site statistics, the geography of visitors, their devices, IP addresses, the unreasonable nature of user behavior on the site, the distribution of attention across pages, etc., change dramatically. Such uncharacteristic changes are easily tracked by modern search engines. Theoretically, it is possible to develop an algorithm that is as close as possible to the actions of users, however, this will be a consequence of a security breach on the Internet, the creation of botnets, which can later be used for DDos attacks and other selfish purposes of hackers. Search engines regard this threat as search spam and have a negative attitude towards the spread of malware on the Internet.

Here is a comment from a Yandex official representative from 2016, when the company began to actively fight this type of search spam:

From here there arises quite logical question: “How do search engines monitor PF boosting in order to lower competitors’ rankings in search results?” We believe that sanctions for cheating PF are imposed through long time use and only manually. In this case, competitors will have to for a long time spend their own money, every day increasingly doubting the prospects of attempts to pessimize competitors. Or perhaps suspicious traffic and PF, which search engines consider unnatural, are simply eliminated from participation in the ranking algorithms. Share your opinion in the comments on this issue.

Here is the official response from Yandex support. The search engine says that such attempts are taken into account and tracked in the algorithm:

How to improve behavioral factors on the site?

Instead of trying to artificially influence user factors by simulating user actions, it is better to work on the quality of the project, its content, page speed, usability and other aspects of a modern Internet resource. Let's look at a few options for optimizing your website to improve behavioral ranking factors.

We are looking for weak points of the site

The best tool for visually displaying conversion holes on your site is Webvisor. This tool allows you to view the entire user session from a first-person perspective and understand the nature and motives of his actions. With the help of Webvisor, you can analyze and understand why visitors leave your site, from which pages they do this and after what actions.

Analyze bounces, sessions with low duration and activity through which users navigate to your site, browsers and devices. Monitor the correct display of your website on different resolutions, devices and browsers. It's possible that your high bounce rate is due to one browser that doesn't support your code.

Session duration

There is no point in purposefully increasing the duration of the session, since this factor strongly depends on the topic of the project, its goals and content. However, an increase in the amount of time users spend on your site can signal greater user engagement with your page's information or product offerings.

If you are considering a commercial site, be sure to add pagination to the pages, add the ability to filter the number of products on the page, use product filters, experiment with loading products without reloading the page (Ajax). Display the number of products in a category so that users understand the breadth of your product range. Provide users with the most complete information about your products: video reviews, photographs from various angles, detailed descriptions goods, their characteristics. Try to display information that is important for users before moving to the product card.

Information sites can increase user engagement and session time with all sorts of surveys on the topic, tests, opinions of experts and celebrities, infographics, useful videos, convenient tables and high-quality structuring and presentation of content on the page.

There is one very interesting technique for checking the usability and convenience of your site. Suggest to your mother or grandmother, who are not advanced users, to find specific page or place an order on your website. Based on their reaction, you will immediately understand what weak areas your site has from the point of view of users.

View depth

Work on meaningful page linking, navigation and site structure so that users can get to any page in no more than 3 clicks. Offer users related content based on their interests and the content of the page they are on.

Reducing the bounce rate

We are removing our site aggressive advertising and pop-ups that block the user's access to content. Bring the content that is most important to the user to the top of the page. If this is a product category, the user should immediately see product items in the visible area of ​​his device. If it's an informational article, the user shouldn't scroll to the middle of the page hoping to get to the content while watching a ton of ads or useless material.

Check that your website scripts work correctly on all devices and browsers. Possibly errors in the browser's code interpretation prevent users from accessing content or completing necessary actions.

Development of snippets

Analyze the CTR of your snippets, traffic by individual pages and the position of the site in search results in comparison with previous indicators. Evaluate the relevance of the information presented in the snippet to the tasks that the user is trying to solve. Don’t forget to take into account seasonality and demand dynamics for certain key queries.

Work on your site's micro markup to get rich snippets. Experiment with using special characters and HTML5 characters in snippet titles and descriptions. See how this affects your rankings and traffic.

Increasing user activity

When using “Chat with the company” in search, provide users with consultations promptly and in as much detail as possible.

At the end of the article, try asking your readers for their opinions on the material presented; perhaps this will increase their involvement in the discussion of a given topic.

We update and update content

This recommendation applies to both commercial and informational sites. In the first case, it is extremely important to keep product balances up to date so that users do not order products that are no longer in stock. It is also necessary to keep prices, descriptions, graphic materials so that the product that people see on the site corresponds to it in reality.

For information sites, it is important to keep data up to date, especially in dynamically changing areas. Legal sites with outdated legal information unlikely to last long TOP issues search engines. Just like a website about SEO optimization that recommends buying links and boosting user factors is unlikely to deserve the attention of users.

Irrelevant and unrenewed content on your resources can negatively impact audience behavior, engagement, and loyalty.

Improving interaction with the site

Try to provide users with the maximum possible functionality and data that will help them solve their problem. Unique for online stores must have are the size charts of the goods. For example, for a developer’s website it will be a big plus to have virtual tour for apartments under construction. For an information site dedicated to diets there will be good addition the presence of a calorie calculator that will help each user calculate their personal indicators and create a weight loss plan.

Put yourself in the shoes of users and think about what kind of interactivity or functionality you can use to help them solve their problems, as well as increase conversion or key indicators of your business.

Conclusion

In order to evaluate the behavioral factors of your site, it is not necessary to know all the elements search algorithms. You already have everything you need for analysis from a human point of view - analytics systems. Master new reports, analyze statistics, user behavior on your site, holes due to which users leave for competitors. Put yourself in the shoes of users and ask yourself the question “what don’t I like about this site?”, attract independent people from your target audience to evaluate the content and usability of your resource.

Subscribe to the blog, share the article on social networks, ask your questions in the comments and share your opinion about the influence of behavioral factors on modern SEO.

Text factors

If the text does not keyword, then the site will not be in the search results. If there is, search engines determine whether the text of the page and the entire site corresponds to this keyword. The following are subject to inspection: uniqueness content (how different are your texts, photos, videos from competitors), relevance information, relevance query (how well and completely does your page respond to asked question). Trying to please the search engine, some optimizers allow serious mistakes. For example, if you use too many keywords in your texts (SEO spam) or write meaningless texts, then your site will never take a leading position in the search.

In online stores you can often see copied descriptions in product cards, poorly designed product cards, low-quality photographs, etc. Don’t be lazy to spend time and effort filling out information about all products. The more detailed and varied it is, the better search engines and users will appreciate you. For online stores, non-unique descriptions and photographs are often forgiven, but sites with unique content, other things being equal, have advantages.

Site structure

This includes the correct site linking(simple and human-friendly navigation through the resource, correct use keywords in anchors and correct distribution of PageRank across landing pages), nesting level pages, availability pages for search robots, indication of the main mirror for all versions of the site, CNC(human-readable page addresses). Make the work of the Yandex robot easier: create access rules in the robots.txt and .htaccess files, place and update the site map in .xml format. Such sites are indexed faster, search robots see when and where changes have occurred, and enter the information into their database.

HTML and meta data

This information is practically invisible to site users, but Yandex takes it into account when creating search results. Use unique, distinct meta tags for different pages site. Tags