40 Unbelievable SEO Statistics You Need to Know

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the roadmap that connects potential visitors with websites. It helps us find what we’re looking for and draws interested customers to our online stores, blogs and websites.

SEO is one of the most important investments you can make for your website so we decided to put together an awesome list of 40 SEO statistics that show you why search engine optimization is so important.

Website 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% ^[1]
  
• Average length of top ranking pages on Google is 1,890 words ^[2]

• 72% of marketers say the single most effective SEO tactic is relevant content creation ^[3]

Organic Search

• The top 2 online activities are search and email ^[4]
  
• Ranking highly for organic search results is crucial; between 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements ^[5]
  
• 66% of distinct search queries result in 1 or more clicks ^[6]
  
• 93% of all traffic comes from a search engine ^[7]

• 21% of searchers click more than one result ^[8]
  
• Over 63% of all searches are performed using Google ^[9]
  
• 94% of all mobile and tablet search traffic comes from Google ^[10]
  
• Google changes its search engine algorithm roughly 500 – 600 time per year ^[11]
  
• Search engines drive 300% more traffic to sites than social media ^[12]
  
• 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once per day ^[13]
  
• 60% of clicks go to the top three websites in search engine results ^[14]
  
• 50% of search queries are four words or longer ^[15]

• The average time spent on a search session is less than 1 minute long ^[16]
  
• Businesses with a strong keyword in their company name rank 1.5 spots higher in search engine results ^[17]
  
• 50% of visitors are more likely to click a result if the brand appears multiple times in search engine results ^[18]
  
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate compared to only 1.7% for outbound leads such as print advertisements ^[19]
  
• 75% of users never click past the first page of search results ^[20]
  
• On Google, 18% of organic clicks go to the first search result, 10% go to the second, and 7% go to the third. ^[21]

• Inbound leads, such as SEO, cost 61% less than outbound leads, such as direct mail or cold calling ^[22]
  
• 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 ^[23]

Local Search

• 50% of users who perform a local search on their smartphone visit a physical store within one day ^[24]
  
• 80% – 90% of shoppers read online reviews before buying a product ^[25]

Social Media

• 61% of all visits from social media websites come from Facebook ^[26]
  
• Posts longer than 1,500 words receive 68.1% more Tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes ^[27]
  
• More than 2 billion searches are performed on Facebook daily ^[28]
  
• Companies are predicted to spend $79 billion on SEO by 2020 ^[29]
  
• 40% of visitors will skip to a different search result if the first is not mobile friendly ^[30]
  
• Worldwide there are over 3.5 billion internet users ^[31]
  
• At least 2 trillion searches are conducted on Google worldwide in a year ^[32]
  
• YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine ^[33]

Blogging

• Business-to-business marketers with blogs receive 67% more leads ^[34]
  
• Companies who blog receive 97% more site links than those who don’t ^[35]
  
• Companies who blog have 434% more indexed pages than those who don’t. That means more leads! ^[36]
  
• Updating and republishing old blog posts can increase traffic more than 100% ^[37]

Emerging Trends

• Voice queries have increased 3400% since 2008 ^[38]
  
• The addition of a single image in content has been shown to increase search rankings ^[39]
  
• A well-optimized video is up to 52 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google than a text article ^[40]

^{* Adapted lead image: Public Domain, pixabay.com via getstencil.com}