How user behaviour affects SEO promotion and website rankings

In SEO marketing and search engine optimisation, one of the most important promotion tools is behavioural factors. A behavioural factor is a set of all signals that Google collects based on how a user interacts with a website. These signals help the search engine evaluate the usefulness, relevance, and quality of a website page.

Behavioural factor in SEO

All user actions related to your website and on the website page that show their interest in the content are considered behavioural factors.

Key behavioural factor indicators:

CTR. The ratio of how many users clicked on your page to its impressions in search results.

Bounce rate. The percentage of users who left the page without taking any action.

Time on site. The amount of time a user spent on the website or website page before leaving.

Site depth. The number of pages viewed in a single session.

Google analyses this data to understand how well your site matches the average behavioural factor in your business niche and location. If visitors actively visit the site, spend a lot of time there, and actively navigate through the pages, this will have a positive effect on the site's position in search results. Such sites are more likely to rank higher.


Why is the behavioural factor so important to Google?

For a search engine, the main criterion for the quality of its work is providing users with the best results. If a website cannot hold the user's attention or has high bounce rates and does not engage the user well, this indicates that the website's content is not valuable to users.

Sites with high-quality and interesting content will show good performance and value to the user. This is the main task of a search engine: to provide you with the most relevant content in the search results and remove anything that is not of interest to you.

Behavioural signals are not the only criteria in ranking, but they play a very important role in the battle for high positions.

It all starts with analysing demand and understanding what users want to get. Whether it's buying a product or finding information, the main thing is that you give them the opportunity to solve their problem.

Key steps for improvement

It is necessary to reduce user drop-offs

Improve content on pages with low engagement and viewing time. Check which pages users leave the site from, and address the issue by retaining them or offering additional content.

Improve the loading speed of the site's pages. Optimise images or video content. Slow loading leads to user loss.

Remove unnecessary or irrelevant content, advertisements, and outdated banners.

Increase user retention time on the site

Relevant and detailed content helps retain users. Try to provide as much useful information as possible in response to a request.

Use more multimedia, add photos, videos, and other elements. Make content easy to view with headings, lists, paragraphs, and visual blocks.

Improve the quality of viewing depth

Provide the ability to navigate to other pages of the site,

good internal linking, links to similar articles or services. Simple and understandable site navigation, site search, breadcrumbs. Recommendations or similar materials block, ‘You may be interested in’ block.

Modern adaptive layout

Traffic from mobile devices shows the best results in many types of businesses. Consider the correct and convenient placement of content for viewing on a mobile phone screen.

Remove overloaded pages and heavy images.

Buttons should be easy to press with your finger.

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