What has Human Behavior got to do with Search Engine Optimization?

Do you know the MOST overlooked factor in SEO?

Well, it’s user behavior!

Go and approach any SEO consultants and they will offer you incredible services like:

• Article/Content writing

• Optimizing the site’s content

• Link building and so on …

But they overlook one  very basic point – the user behavior!

SEO will no doubt get you at the TOP of the search engine result pages (SERPs), however, user behavior will help you be there. But often times, most SEO consultant will offer you a very bad piece of advice, i.e. set up a blog/site and then perform SEO second.

This is a wrong mentality!

In fact, you need to understand there are 3 steps to SEO,

1.    On-page SEO

– Is creating content (pages and blog posts) that would be easy for search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing to read and understand what your pages are about, index it, and display it to people (potential customers) for relevant search terms.

2.    Off-page SEO

– Refers to link building to other RELEVANT sites (forums, blogs, article directories) in order to build backlinks (link back to your site) so that people can visit your site other than search engine page.
Here are some great ways to build yourself quality backlinks.

3.    User behavior

– How internet users interact to your site (blog commenting, forum thread posting) will tell search engines whether your site rankings is correct.

What Search Engine Robots CAN’T see?

When search engine robots crawls through your website, they can READ the content, however, they can’t gain an emotional response to it.

Consider this example “How to get more free traffic to your site.”

Search engine robots can quickly tell this site is about SEO and also understand that there’s a lot of “How to” guides out there.

But how does it know it’s better than other websites?

The main job of search engine is to offer best search result pages (SERPs) for any keyword phrase, but it must be for humans, not for robots.

How search engine robots get emotional

So far, a robot can find this site and understand its’ context but to assess if it is a good site it needs some help from humans and internet users.

Search engine can only measure:

1.    Click through rate (CTR) – The percentage of internet users who click on the site link displayed on search result page.
2.    Bounce Rate – After click through, what percentage of visitors pressed the BACK button and how quickly they pressed the button?

Google has few more advantage!

Internet marketers serious about SEO have Google Analytics installed on their site which can tell a whole lot more like:

1.    After the click through, where do visitors go?
2.    How much time they spend on your site/ on each page

So, you see, the search engine robot calculates where a site/page should rank for a particular keyword phrase.

Then they utilize the “user behavior” to determine if that first calculation was good or bad. And then, they decide whether your site should move up or move down in the search results page.

Simple, eh?

SEO UPs and DOWNs

That generally means that it’s okay to use both content and code in order to gain better rankings, but only to see them drop back again.

Unless you are getting a help of an SEO consultant that knows and understand “user-behavior” is equally important as your page URLs, titles, headers, and other SEO factors.

So, user-behavior must be a key part of any SEO campaign.

While boosting your CTR depends upon the code, however, reducing your site’s/ page’s bounce rate or increasing the average time your visitors spend on your site is a whole different ball game.

Good Design + Great Content + Coding + Links = Positive User Behavior

Most companies try to keep web design and content (SEO) separate, however, we DON’T.

Why?

How your site looks, how easy it is to navigate, and the way it encourages visitors to explore other content … all affects the bounce rate as well as average time spent on site.

That means good web design is a vital part of SEO, just like coding, content, and links are.

So, how come sites that are UGLY still rank HIGHER than other?

With SEO, everything is about competition. For example, website A with poor design but great content can rank higher provided that there isn’t a site with a great design as well as great content and SEOed in order to compete.

But it also means that Website A can topple anytime from the higher rankings as soon as another site with great content and design comes along.

Just ask online store owners!

All Round SEO Services

So, if you would like to discuss about overall SEO services, please contact us for a FREE 1 hour SEO consultation.