When it comes to getting found online, there is no better medium than search. Since the creation of search engines, SEO has been a powerful strategy to ensure that your brand gets noticed by the right user, at the right time. While the search industry has shifted over the years, one thing remains solid; SEO is essential for online marketing success.
Good SEO takes time and dedication. It’s more than just link building or content creation. Depending on the industry and the type of search you are trying to increase your visibility in, you’re going to need to use different strategies and tactics. Today’s search engines give users more options, making them more lucrative for site owners than ever before. Below are 70 SEO statistics that prove the power of search.
Organic Search
- The top 2 online activities are search and email.
- Ranking highly for organic search results is crucial; between 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements.
- 66% of distinct search queries result in 1 or more clicks.
- 21% of searchers click more than one result.
- Over 63% of all searches are performed using Google.
- 94% of all mobile and tablet search traffic comes from Google.
- Search engines drive 300% more traffic to sites than social media.
- 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once per day.
- 60% of clicks go to the top three websites in search engine results.
- 50% of search queries are four words or longer.
- The average time spent on a search session is less than 1 minute long.
- 50% of visitors are more likely to click a result if the brand appears multiple times in search engine results.
- SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate compared to only 1.7% for outbound leads such as print advertisements.
- 75% of users never click past the first page of search results.
- Inbound leads, such as SEO, cost 61% less than outbound leads, such as direct mail or cold calling.
- Marketers using both organic SEO techniques and pay-per-click ads see an average of 25% more clicks and 27% more profits compared to using a single technique.
- Companies are predicted to spend $79 billion on SEO by 2020.
- 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
- 57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative.
- 81% of people perform some type of online research before making a large purchase.
- 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.
- 61% of internet users do research on a product online before making a purchase.
- Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (ex. cold-calling, direct mail, etc.) have a 1.7% close rate.
- 70-80% of people ignore paid search results, choosing to only click on organic listings.
- 55% of searchers don’t know which links in the Search Engine Results pages are PPC ads, according to a new survey. And up to 50% of users shown a Search engine Results page screenshot could not identify paid ads.
- Bounce rates increase by 50% if your website takes 2 seconds extra to load.
- Conversions fall by 12% for every extra second that it takes your website to load.
- Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective, with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise, and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly.
- Total Organic search visits fell 7% Y/Y in Q2, down from 11% Y/Y growth a year earlier, as organic listings face increased competition from paid search ads, particularly on mobile.
Local Search
- 50% of users who perform a local search on their smartphone visit a physical store within one day.
- 80% – 90% of shoppers read online reviews before buying a product.
- 72% of consumers who perform a local search 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 site.
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
- 86% of people look up the location of a business on 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.
- Businesses that have a strong keyword in the business name rank 1.5 spots higher than if there is no keyword in the name.
- 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles.
Content
- Quality content is the key factor in any good SEO strategy. Improvements in content have been known to increase blog traffic by as much as 2,000%.
- Business-to-business marketers with blogs receive 67% more leads.
- Companies who blog receive 97% more site links than those who don’t.
- Companies who blog have 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t. That means more leads!
- Updating and republishing old blog posts can increase traffic more than 100%.
- 72% of marketers say the single most effective SEO tactic is relevant content creation.
- 47% of consumers view 3-5 pieces of content created by a company before talking to a salesman from that company.
- A Backlinko report revealed that longer content tends to rank higher. The average first page result on Google contains 1,890 words.
- A July 2015 study by Moz and BuzzSumo analyzed the shares and links of over 1 million articles and found that long-form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content.
- The Backlinko study also reported that using a single image within content will increase search engine rankings.
- 62% of B2B marketers and 51% of B2C marketers have optimized their blogs for mobile in order to improve SEO.
- Google now handles at least 2 trillion searches per year.
- During April 2019, Google processed 9.57 billion search queries.
- Google currently holds 87% of total search engine market share for smart phones and 75% market share for desktop and laptop computers (September 2019).
- Bing at 9.8%, Baidu at 9.27%, Yahoo at 2.85%, and Yandex at 1.22% account for most of the remaining desktop/laptop search engine market share.
- In July 2019, more than 1.35 billion unique global visitors had visited Bing.com, up from 1.26 billion visitors in December 2018.
- Google has decreased the number of organic blue links displayed as the result of a search from 10 to 8.5, on average.
- In 2016 Google generated $63.11 billion in net digital ad revenues worldwide, an increase of 19.0% over 2015. That represents 32.4% of the worldwide digital ad market, which in 2016 is worth $229.25 billion.
- Google receives over 57,000 searches per second on any given day.
- According to Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, high-quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search.
- Google “near me” mobile searches that contain a variant of “can I buy” or “to buy” have grown over 500% between 2015 and 2017.
- Google changes its search engine algorithm roughly 500 – 600 times per year.
- On Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the first search result, 10% go to the second, and 7% go to the third.
- 49% of Google searches don’t result in a click, demonstrating the increasing emphasis on optimizing for SERPs. This is an increase of 12% from the first quarter of 2016.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- As of Q1 2019, the click-through rate on organic searches has fallen by 13% to 47.4%, while the click-through rate on search ads has risen by 75 percent to 3.69% over the same period.
- Three-fourths of people (75%) say paid search ads make it easier to find the information they are searching for on a website or search engine.
- More than one-quarter of people (26%) click on a paid search ad because it mentions a brand they are familiar with.
- 45.5% of people couldn’t identify ads vs organic results if there were no ads in the right column.
- 49% of businesses receive more than 1,000 average Search views of their Google My Business listing per month, and 33% receive 1,000+ views on Maps.
- On average, businesses make $3 in revenue for every $1.60 they spend on AdWords.
- In Q1 2019 Google’s US web search engine, sent 7.2% of all search clicks to paid results.
Emerging Trends
- YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.
- Voice queries have increased 3400% since 2008.
- A well-optimized video is up to 52 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google than a text article.
- As of 2015, more searches are done every day on mobile devices than desktops.
- 87% of people who own a smartphone use a search engine at least once a day.
- 40% of mobile website visitors will leave the site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- Voice search currently accounts for 10% of total searches.
- From 2017 to 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated about 50% percent of global website traffic.
- Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all IP traffic (both business and consumer) by 2022, up from 75 percent in 2017.
- Smartphones will account for 44 percent of total IP traffic by 2022, up from 18 percent in 2017.
There are more reasons than ever before to invest in SEO and SEM. If you are serious about driving quality, targeted visitors to your website, taking time to learn and implement SEO will pay off huge in the long run. If you are interested in learning SEO, check out my course below.
Sources:
- Marketing Sherpa
- Red Website Design
- MarketingProfs
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Land
- Moz
- Search Engine Journal
- Moz
- Search Engine Land
- NetMarketshare
- Moz
- Ironpaper
- HubSpot
- Search Engine Journal
- HubSpot
- Moz
- Local SEO Guide
- Brafton
- Search Engine Journal
- imFORZA
- imFORZA
- Search Engine Journal
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Land
- Forbes
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- Click X
- HubSpot
- Search Engine Land
- Tyton Media
- Internet Live Stats
- Android Police
- Mushroom Networks
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- HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010: Archived reference
- ContentPlus, now Axonn Media. Original infographic
- Backlinko
- HubSpot
- Backlinko
- Unbounce
- WordStream
- MarketDive
- Reuters
- Cisco
- Internet Live Stats
- eMarketer
- Searchmetrics
