How To Understand and Leverage Behavioral Insights for Growth

Similar to a hiker exploring a trail, a user visiting your website will leave behind breadcrumbs of their behavior.

By analyzing where they click, scroll, and pause, you can map out their journey — where they move freely, where they hesitate, and where they turn back. These insights reveal not only what your potential customer is looking for, but where your site may need improvement. 💻

With this data, you can do two key things: optimize your website’s layout, content, and speed and synchronize your other marketing channels with your organic search efforts.

To fully harness the power of this data, you’ll need to know where to start. Here are five effective ways to leverage behavioral insights and enhance your search-first marketing approach.

1. Identify and Monitor Key Behavioral Metrics

Not all metrics are equally useful for understanding customer behavior. Save time by focusing on the data that matters most. Here are some KPIs we recommend prioritizing.

📈Click-through rate (CTR): Your CTR is the percentage of users who click your link in the SERPs compared to all users who saw the link. The higher the CTR, the more effective your search-first marketing efforts are at driving site traffic.

🔄Bounce Rates: This is the percentage of users who leave your website without engaging. Common culprits for a high bounce rate include slow page loading times, confusing layout, cluttered design, and irrelevant content.

⏳Session Duration: This is the time a user spends interacting with your site. Longer session durations signal to search engines that users are exploring your site, which can boost your search rankings. A user-friendly design paired with relevant and engaging content often results in extended session durations.

📄Pageviews: Your pageviews track the number of times users visit a particular URL or load it into the browser. You can use this metric to see which pages interest your audience the most and identify any patterns to inform your content strategy. 

2. Optimize Content Based on User Behavior

Now that we understand the key metrics, let’s explore how you can transform behavioral data into informed action.

Refresh Your Website’s Content

• When to Act: If specific pages have low pageviews or short session durations, it could mean the content isn’t resonating with your audience or aligning with search intent. Consider updating your content by ensuring your keywords match user intent, conducting new keyword research, and adjusting formatting to improve readability.

Enhance High-Performing Pages

• When to Act: When certain pages show high engagement, build on this momentum by targeting related keywords to encourage users to continue exploring the subject matter.

3. Update Keywords and Refine SEO Strategy

Continuously refining your keywords and SEO strategy is crucial for keeping your website relevant and visible to your audience. A search-first approach is dynamic and requires the flexibility to adapt to changing search trends.

Keyword Optimization

• When to Act: When behavioral data shows that users are not finding your content, look for potential keyword gaps or misalignment with search intent. Remember, the search intent for a keyword can change over time.

SEO Refinement

• When to Act: If your pages aren’t generating clicks in the SERPs, refine title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page SEO to improve visibility and engagement. Your page title and meta description should accurately reflect your content and contain your keyword.

4. Improve User Experience With Technical SEO Adjustments

User experience matters. If visitors are bouncing quickly or spending little time on your site, set aside time to examine your technical SEO.

Site Improvements

• When to Act: If your website has high bounce rates or short session durations, consider simplifying navigation, increasing site speed, or optimizing for mobile to improve the user experience.

• If users are abandoning your site altogether, prioritize improving page load times, fixing any errors, and ensuring your site is both secure and responsive. 

5. Utilize Behavioral Insights To Inform Broader Marketing Strategies

Creating consistency throughout your marketing channels can improve targeting, elevate the user experience, and drive a higher ROI by providing a unified message across all touchpoints.

Cross-Channel Optimization:

• When to Act: If behavioral data reveals patterns in user preferences, use these insights to align other marketing channels with your search-first strategy. For example, if you notice that visitors frequently engage with blog content and social media posts related to a particular topic, align your email campaigns and paid ads to emphasize similar themes.