Google’s core philosophy is to "provide users with the best search experience." Except for SEO and ranking, we usually advise customers to pay attention to user experience. After all, this is like the quality of the service, which is intuitive.
In the past, Google has never responded positively to a question: Will user behavior affect SEO? Google is always confirming and denying that there is a correlation between the two.
This time we will discuss with you, is user behavior really one of the key factors affecting rankings?
- Evidence that user behavior affects website ranking
In the Federal Trade Commission bill, Google’s former chief search quality director Udi Manber once said:
"The ranking itself is affected by the click data. If we discover that, for a particular query, hypothetically, 80 percent of people click on Result No. 2 and only 10 percent click on Result No. 1, after a while we figure probably Result 2 is the one people want. So we'll switch it."
- Ranking is affected by click data. If 80% of people in a particular search click on the second result and only 10% click on the first result, after a period of time, we think that the second result is what the user wants, so we will Replace it.
Edmond Lau, who worked in Google’s search quality related department, also made similar comments:
"It's pretty clear that any reasonable search engine would use click data on their own results to feed back into ranking to improve the quality of search results. Infrequently clicked results should drop toward the bottom because they're less relevant, and frequently clicked results bubble toward the top."
- Obviously, any search engine should use click data to adjust its results to improve the quality of search results. Search results that are less clicked should lower their rankings because these search results are less relevant, and search results that are frequently clicked should improve their rankings.
In 2015, Rand Fishkin of Moz also conducted an experiment:
Rand asked followers to search for "best grilled steak" on Google on Twitter, and:
1. Click on the first search result, and it will immediately pop out
2. Click The fourth search result, and stay on that page for a while.
After 70 minutes and four or five hundred interactions, the site’s ranking has risen from fourth to first.
- Which user behavior indicators affect rankings?
- Click rate
- Stay time
- Pogo-sticking
CTR :
CTR is the number of clicks in the search result list divided by the number of impressions.
Most of the factors that affect the click-through rate are not artificially controllable, and it is difficult to make an impact.
But there is one thing you must know when talking about CTR: the
better the ranking, the better the CTR.
If the ranking increases, but the click-through rate does not increase correspondingly, Google will recalculate the ranking.
So if your click-through rate is significantly higher (or lower) than the current ranking range should be, then Google will re-rank the results in a short time.
But it should be noted that the click-through rate will affect the ranking at any time.
Remember the experiment by Rand Fishkin above? After the click experiment was over, the website that had been promoted from fourth to first returned to fourth again.
This means: a short-term sudden increase in clicks will only lead to short-term ranking changes.
Stay time :
The stay time here refers to the time it takes for the searcher to return to the search result after clicking the search result.
The longer the stay, the better.
Pogo-sticking :
After clicking on a website from the search results, the behavior of quickly jumping back to the search results is called "Pogo-sticking".
Pogo-sticking has not yet seen a more unified translation, so Qibao is referred to as "bouncing behavior" here.
Google expects that the search results that rank first can meet the needs of searchers. The most ideal situation is that searchers can meet their needs immediately, and there is no need to jump back to the search results and click on other search results.
So even if your website ranks very well, if many searchers think that this content is not what they expect to see, and quickly jump back to the search results after clicking on the website and clicking into other search results, your website ranking will be Was lowered.
! ! User metrics will affect the overall quality score of the website! !
Do not think that website optimization should only focus on key pages. Google will analyze, archive and archive data based on the click-through rate, dwell time, Pogo-sticking, commercial level... Group.
These groups are used to compare the quality of the website. If your website data is worse than other websites in the data in several groups, Google will think that your website is of low quality and lower the overall website ranking. Conversely speaking: if your website data is better than other websites in the group, your website's overall ranking will be improved.
So now we know that we should increase the click-through rate, dwell time, and reduce the occurrence of pogo-sticking.
- What should I do to improve the user experience?
1. Enrich the search results of the website (SERP)
Check whether the Title, URL, and Description of the website can attract clicks, and make sure that the content of the web page is related to the Title and Description. Do not use content that is not on the website to deceive searchers in order to increase clicks. This will only increase Pogo-sticking, on the contrary, will reduce website ranking.
And please try to search this page to see if the search results are abnormal? Whether the Title is truncated, whether the content of the Description is related to the content of the website, whether there is a message marked by Google, etc., are all possible reasons for the decrease in click-through rate.
2. Optimize webpages with low clickthrough rates.
In Google Webmaster Tools, you can filter terms, webpages, countries/regions, devices, and search appearances based on clicks, exposure, clickthrough rates, and rankings.
(Image source: Webmaster Tools)
(Image source: Chitika )
On average: the first place will have a click rate of 32.5%, the second place will have 17.6%, and the third place will have 11.4%. If your website’s click rate is different from the average click rate, you should be vigilant, and Identify the problem and solve it.
3. Reduce website loading time
The conversion rate of a mobile website that loads in two seconds or less is 15% higher than a general mobile website - Think with Google
When the page load speed is:
In 1~3 seconds, the probability of jumping out is 32%
1~5 seconds, the probability of jumping out is 90%
1~6 seconds, the probability of jumping out is 106%
1 to 10 seconds, out of the possibility% 123 - of Think with the Google
4. Avoid using aggressive ads
Have you ever been annoyed by ads that popped up suddenly while browsing the web? What's even more annoying is that X can't always appear quickly. It will only appear after a few seconds or after watching the ad video. Do you want to jump out of the page and stop browsing?
You are in this mood, and so are searchers. Adding this kind of advertisement on your website is easier to increase bounces. You can try other advertisement blocks instead of full-page advertisements.
What’s more, Google announced on 2019/01/09: Chrome will block 12 annoying ads on its own on 07/09 of the same year, including common pop-ups, videos, music, and cover ads, and Chrome’s The market share reached 62.28% in December 2018. Are you willing to give up 60% of the traffic for an advertisement?
5. Add links to related content
Whether it is product pages, service descriptions, or simply information sharing, users will always want to see more. Links related to "Related Articles" and "Other People Also Read" can be added to the page so that users can browse the website in more depth.
On the product page, you can put "People who bought this product also bought..." and "People who saw this product also read...", and the products related to the product are also exposed on the page, and then Reduce bounce rate.
6. Make 404 pages useful
The 404 page is generated when the website deletes the page, the wrong link, and the user enters the URL by themselves. Although such a page will inevitably appear on the website, how to reduce the bounce rate through the optimization of the 404 page? Please use this article to learn how to optimize your 404 page: small details are the key, start optimizing your 404 page now!
Purchase clicks and traffic
"Since increasing clicks, traffic, and dwell time are effective for SEO, then it must be effective for me to buy clicks", trust Google! Google is very good at catching all kinds of cleverness,
Someone has experimented in 2015: clicks created will not improve rankings, let's look at the patent description held by Google:
"Note that safeguards against spammers (users who generate fraudulent clicks in an attempt to boost certain search results) can be taken to help ensure that the user selection data is meaningful, even when very little data is available for a given (rare) query. These safeguards can include employing a user model that describes how a user should behave over time, and if a user doesn't conform to this model, their click data can be disregarded. The safeguards can be designed to accomplish two main objectives: (1 ) ensure democracy in the votes (eg, one single vote per cookie and/or IP for a given query-URL pair), and (2) entirely remove the information coming from cookies or IP addresses that do not look natural in their browsing behavior ."
Key points of interception:
...These preventive measures include a user model that describes how the user should act. If the user does not fit this model, the click data will be ignored...
Do you still want to buy unnecessary clicks after reading this? Or concentrate on providing content that allows users to stay!
Reference materials:
Modifying search result ranking based on implicit user feedback
User behavior: a ranking factor to reckon with
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