SEO strategies have evolved tenfold in recent years, combining content creation, branding, and promotion to drive the right visitors to your website.
Whether you’re trying to improve your website’s SEO, or for one of your clients, understanding the latest SEO statistics is important to streamline your approach.
It’s not about finding ways around the system or algorithms that are in place by search engines like Google, it’s about optimizing what you’ve got and understanding how SEO works.
Table of Contents
General SEO Statistics
- 93% of online sessions start with a search engine
- 90.1% of the total search engine market share is held by Google
- 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates more leads than other marketing initiatives
- 81% of people will perform online research before making a big purchase
- 47% of consumers will view up to 5 pieces of content created by a company before talking to a salesperson
- 72% of online marketers say content marketing is the most effective SEO tactic
- 75% of people won’t scroll past the first page of a search engine
- 61% of internet users perform research on a product before making a purchase
- Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate
- Around 80% of people ignore paid search results
- If your website takes 2 seconds extra to load, bounce rates increase by 50%
- Conversion rates fall by 12% for every extra second it takes for a website to load
- Voice search accounts for 10% of total searches
Local SEO Statistics
- 72% of consumers who perform a local search will visit a store within 5 miles of their current location
- 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly website
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation
- 86% of people look up the location of a business using Google Maps
- 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase
- 18% of location-based mobile searches result in a sale within one day
- 30% of all mobile searches are related to location
SEO Ranking Statistics
- 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google
- Only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication
- 25.02% of top-ranking pages don’t have a meta description
- 40.61% of pages have meta descriptions that truncate
- Google shows meta descriptions in search results only 37.22% of the time
- The average page in the top 10 is over 2 years old
- The average top-ranking page also ranks in the top 10 search results for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords
Mobile SEO Statistics
- 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide comes from mobile
- There are more searches on mobile performance than desktop
- 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new product or brand when searching on their smartphones
- Ranking in position 1 on mobile gets 27.7% of clicks compared to 19.3% on desktop
Search Engine Statistics
- 93% of online experiences begin with Google, Yahoo!, or Bing
- Baidu holds around 15% of the search engine market shared, second to Google
- More than one billion people use Google every month
- Google relies on more than 200 ranking factors
- 80% of Google’s algorithm relies on off-page factors
- 12.29% of search queries have featured snippets in their search results
- The number 1 results in Google’s organic search results has an average click-through rate of 31.7%
- 39% of purchasers are influenced by a relevant search
- 61.5% of desktop and 34.4% of mobile searches result in no-clicks
SEO Industry Statistics
- 74.71% of SEO professionals charge a monthly retainer fee for their clients
- Monthly retainers generally cost between $501-1000 per month
- 88.28% of SEO professionals charge $150 per hour or less for their services
- Per-project pricing at $501-1000 is the most popular tier
- SEOs serving the worldwide market charge 130.74% of those serving the local market
Link Building SEO Statistics
- Companies that have a blog get 97% more backlinks
- The average page in top position has over 35,000 external backlinks
- Updating old posts with new content can boost traffic by over 100%
- Blog articles with images get 94% more views
- 38% of marketers are publishing content at least once a week
References
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/featured-snippets-study/
- https://backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats
- https://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/meet-needs-i-want-to-buy-moments/
- https://sparktoro.com/blog/google-ctr-in-2018-paid-organic-no-click-searches/
- https://freshchalk.com/blog/150k-small-business-website-teardown-2019
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/mobile-search-trends-consumers-to-stores/
- https://www.seoclarity.net/mobile-desktop-ctr-study-11302/
- https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/marketing-stats/
- https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/10-stats-you-need-to-know-about-seo/
- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-46-of-searches-have-local-intent-26529.html
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2018/07/30/seo-industry-approaching-80-billion-but-all-you-want-is-more-web-traffic/#6673b7c07337
- https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/inbound-marketing-stats
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2019/02/07
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-site-speed-tools/
- https://seoexpertbrad.com/local-seo-stats/
- https://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-marketing-report-40688285
- https://www.omnicoreagency.com/digital-marketing-statistics/
- https://neilpatel.com/blog/updating-old-content-to-boost-ranking/
- https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/seo/
- http://www.search-south.com/2018/01/30/25-search-engine-marketing-statistics-2018/