We already knew Google formulates its rankings based on a wide variety of factors and metrics, one thing seems to be certain that Google is giving more importance to user experience. Google is seriously taking into effect how the user is engaged and satisfied by the result, in order to make their online journey as fulfilling as possible. The key to satisfying users is by measuring user interaction signals, analysing them, and then acting upon your web analysis. I would like to provide here important factors derived from my experiments on Google search.
1. Organic Click Through Rate (CTR) for a Keyword: Pages that get clicked more in CTR may get a SERP boost for that particular keyword.
2. Organic CTR for All Keywords: A page’s (or site’s) organic CTR for all keywords is ranks for may be a human-based, user interaction signal.
3. Bounce Rate: Not everyone in SEO agrees bounce rate matters, but it may be a way of Google to use their users as quality testers (pages where people quickly bounce is probably not very good).
4. Direct Traffic: It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine whether or not people visit a site (and how often). Sites with lots of direct traffic are likely higher quality than sites that get very little direct traffic.
5. Repeat Traffic: They may also look at whether or not users go back to a page or site after visiting. Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost.
6. Chrome Bookmarks: We know that Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might get a boost.
7. Google Toolbar Data: Search Engine Watch’s Danny Goodwin reports that Google uses toolbar data as a ranking signal. However, besides page loading speed and malware, it’s not known what kind of data they glean from the toolbar.
8. Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality.
9. Dwell Time: Google pays very close attention to “dwell time” dwell time is the amount of time between when a searcher clicks through from a link on the search results page to when he goes back to the SERP. A longer dwell time is a clear indication – to Google and to you – that the result was valuable. The ideal search experience is when the searcher immediately lands on a page that has exactly the information user was looking for.
There are lots of different positive user interaction signals to consider and some may be more specific or valuable to you and your business than the next.
The four main measurables are:
- A site or page that is simple and easy to understand, navigate, and interact with.
- A site or page that can provide direct, useable, and relevant information to the user’s query
- A site or page that is attractive, thoughtfully arranged, and accessible from any browser across all devices
- A site or page that serves the user with content that is credible, high-quality, and desirable
Tips to improve Dwell Time
- Up the quality of your content. Make sure every page is unique and delivers the information promised in the meta description.
- Create task-oriented content pages. Analyze queries as the first in a series of steps leading to completion of a task. Provide several pages that can lead someone through those steps.
- Entice searchers to stay on your site with links to additional information on the landing page. For example, on e-commerce sites, a Related Products section encourages them to keep exploring if the initial result wasn’t spot-on or the item searched for is out of stock.
Conclusion
It’s important that you follow SEO best practices and hire a good web designing company who follow white-hat techniques when trying to improve your user behavior metrics. For example, Google won’t be fooled by the use of bots to artificially increase overall dwell time.
Simply focusing on how to help searchers find what they’re looking for on your website is the only effective way to optimize user behavior metrics.