How to Utilize Search Behavior and User Behavior Data in Your Marketing Strategy 

What is Search Behavior & User Behavior Data?

Lead generation utilizing digital marketing seems impersonal before form fills and phone calls. However, you can learn a lot about a potential customer by looking at those initial steps into the buyer’s journey —how they search and what they click. A comprehensive digital marketing strategy will review multiple iterations of this journey to truly understand what your buyers look for and where you stand amongst the competition. The key is to review and connect search behavior and user behavior. 

This blog will explain what this data includes, where to find it, and how to utilize it to optimize your digital marketing strategies. Let’s start by defining these behaviors. 

What is search behavior? 

Search behavior is how your buyers search for you on search engines like Google or Bing. Through tools like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Google Search console, you can analyze the keywords used in the queries to identify how users are searching. Tools like GA4 can then tell you what type of result they click on (organic, paid, image, video, etc.). This data gives you a picture of what queries you show up for and how you appear to those users in the search landscape. Once you understand how their initial search works, you can review user behavior data—where their internet search has taken them. 

What is user behavior? 

User behavior data shows where users land and the actions taken on your website. You can see what landing pages the potential buyer reviews, what they download, what videos they view, and what forms they fill out. These two behaviors together give your business a complete picture of the start of a buyer’s journey and how effective your marketing efforts are at this stage. 

Understanding potential buyers—how search behavior leads to user behavior. 

Search Behavior Trends

The ever-changing search landscape refers to algorithm and feature updates Google and Microsoft make to their search engines, which keep digital marketers on their toes. Over the years, we’ve seen a larger emphasis on images and videos; plus, definitional content via “People Ask” and the new AI search generative experiences. These companies will continue to test, meaning revisiting search behavior with each change is crucial to keep up and stay ahead. 

The more areas you populate in the search engine results page (SERP), the more likely your business will get the click. It provides the opportunity to appeal to a variety of users’ search preferences and looking at what users are clicking on can help your business determine what types of features to focus on. 

A breakdown of SERP feature percentages in US searches via Advanced Web Ranking.

How to Utilize Search Behavior Data 

This overall data from Advanced Web Ranking tells us that investing in high-quality photos and videos is worth it. Additionally, including helpful content that explains products, processes, and services to populate feature snippets and new AI features will help your business’s SERP presence.  

It is also important to remember as search engines continue to test AI features, the search query will always define the user, and that user is human. With a human initiating the search and selecting from the AI-generated results, it’s important to keep user intent and the B-SMART Method^TM at the forefront of your content strategy. 

Website User Behavior Trends

Congratulations, a user has arrived at your website thanks to one of your successful search strategies—what’s next? This is where user behavior data comes into play to help you continue guiding those users through the buyer’s journey. 

Once a user arrives on your website via search, you have a limited time to capture their attention. Even with a more research focused B2B buyer, you have an average of one minute and 22 seconds. That’s why you want to consider what catches a user’s eye, including how text is laid out, images, video, tables, and spec sheets. 

A survey conducted by TopSpot shows what web content catches our Clients’ attention.

To get the data on user behavior, you can start on Google Analytics 4 and review the “Engagement” report. Here you can view landing page data and the events (actions) taken on your site. 

You’ll be able to gather the necessary information to determine what on your website is keeping prospective buyers interested and what is seeing drop-off to make the appropriate changes to your content. 

How to Utilize User Behavior Data 

For TopSpot partners, once we identify the strengths and weaknesses of your website content in GA4, we can compare this data and inform changes based on the user behavior of quality leads. Form-fill data feeds into the proprietary tool LOOP Analytics, which provides insights into lead behavior, informs strategy, and reveals new opportunities.  

LOOP can help put the pieces GA4 provides together. It reveals the start of the buyer’s journey for individual prospects by showing the source of website visitors, the pages visited, and the paths taken over multiple visits. You can also employ the form field data to inform keywords with terms prospects are actually using. 

View of the path a prospect took before filling out a form. 

We created an addition to LOOP Analytics called the User Behavior Reporting Tool  to gain a better understanding of the types of visitors your website receives to help tailor your content and strategy. This report shows the companies your users are affiliated with so you can get to know those users and their needs even further. 

Identifying companies within target industries and their size can help make sense of the user’s activity and why a conversion did or did not happen. By capitalizing on the content that attracts target companies, your business can prioritize keywords and content to boost your search strategy.  

By understanding and connecting search behavior and user behavior data, you can take this collected information to put your business on the path of your targeted buyer’s journey. For more information about LOOP or if you need help connecting the dots to create an integrated marketing strategy, contact TopSpot.