38 Insightful SEO Statistics Business Owners Should Know in 2022
Organic search is arguably the most profitable marketing channel today. It’s a Battle Royale in which the winner usually takes it all.
Google currently holds about 87% of shares in the organic search market, and the first position in Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) usually takes up to 46.9% of all clicks.
To maintain a front footing, you need to learn and apply industry-best SEO practices.
While we’ve seen some wild changes emerge in this industry over the past few years, a common thread continues to exist – an increasing focus on user experience.
In this article, we’ll be looking at very important SEO statistics and user-oriented trends bound to shape the organic search market this year and beyond.
Organic Searches Statistics
First, let’s take a look at the segments of the organic search market that have thrived the most over the past few years.
Mobile:
1. When it comes to traffic potential, SEO leaves other channels in the dust. SEO offers 20 times more traffic potential compared to PPC on both mobile and desktop.
2. 40.9% of mobile organic search leads to organic clicks, whereas 2% result in paid clicks. However, there are no clicks at all 57.1% of the times.
Desktop search:
3. Similarly, 53% of all trackable website traffic originates from organic search. So even if you’re a PPC master, you’ll still miss out on half your website’s traffic potential if you downplay the importance of SEO.
4. 90.63% of all the existing web pages get zero traffic from Google. Thus, the worst thing to do is to build and launch your pages expecting organic traffic without optimization and serious SEO work.
5. You need to put in the necessary work on your end because Google already has enough on its plate. For searchers, information is key, and Google is providing a lot of information directly in the SERPs, that’s why 50.3% of all browser-based searches on Google result in zero clicks.
6. Additionally, 15% of the billions of queries that come in on the platform every day are totally new to Google – that’s a really big number. However, you can easily exploit these unfamiliar searches by leveraging sound semantic structure.
Voice Search:
Are you considering voice optimization too? The rise of voice search is just starting.
7. Google Assistant is now built into approximately 1 billion devices.
8. 27% of the global online population use voice search on mobile devices.
Local Search:
Being a local business isn’t an excuse not to position yourself on the world wide web by exploring SEO trends.
9. These days, people use the internet to find local businesses 90% of the time.
Organic Pages Statistics
Struggling to justify the need for SEO investments to your CEO or stakeholders? Statistics abound showing that SEO generates greater value compared to other marketing strategies like PPC. Visitors from organic searches offer greater lifetime value.
10. For starters, organic visitors spend more time on your website on average – an indication of higher engagement rates. Organic search also has a lower bounce rate than average – 53.54% compared to paid traffic – 76.71%.
11. Also, organic visitors generate 81% more page views compared to paid traffic. The same study says that visitors also stay 231% longer on an organic SERP result. This greater level of engagement also proves that organic visitors are more likely to become loyal customers.
Organic Clicks Statistics
Now, what factors affect click-through rates, which is one of the most important reasons for getting good organic rankings?
Here are some interesting facts you should know about organic CTRs:
12. Over 99% of all clicks from search queries take place on Google’s page #1.
13. The first result on Google page #1 takes up 46.9% of clicks and 10 times more clicks than the 10th result.
14. Down the line, the 10th result gets only 2.5% of clicks and the rest barely get more than 1%.
However, if you can’t make it to the number one spot, there are still other ways to improve your CTR. But this doesn’t mean you should give up on climbing up the search rankings.
15. On average, your CTR increases by 30.8% when you move up 1 spot on the first page of the search results. However, this varies a little depending on your current position.
16. Keyword-rich URLs can enhance your CTR. For instance, a study found that pages with an exact keyword-query match generated 45% more clicks compared to those that didn’t include keywords.
17. Targeting keywords containing 4 or more words significantly increases your chances of getting clicks – even if you rank fourth or fifth, you can still enjoy twice as many clicks as a #1 result for a one-worded keyword.
18. Title tags with a question have a 14.1% higher CTR compared to phrase titles. Plus, title tags with 15 – 40 characters usually command the highest CTR – 8.5% higher compared to those outside this character range.
Industry Spending Statistics
Search traffic has been around for decades and continues to grow in relevance and potential by the day.
In 2020, businesses spent over $80 billion on SEO services – a significant rise compared to the $65 billion in 2018.
19. 85% of retailers believe organic search is the most effective channel for generating leads.
20. About 64% of marketers have actively invested in SEO according to a Hubspot Survey.
21. On average, small businesses spend $497.16 on SEO every month.
22. However, businesses that spend less than $500 per month are 75% more likely to be disappointed compared to those who invest more than that. On the other hand, those who spend over $500 per month on SEO services are 53.3% more likely to be ‘extremely satisfied’ compared to those who spend less.
SEO ROI Statistics
23. 76% of people who search local businesses on their smartphones usually end up visiting a business within a day, and 28% of local searches result in purchases. Also, SEO delivers greater medium/long term ROI compared to PPC and other channels.
24. Here’s a table showing the breakdown of the average ROI for SEO in various niches:
| Industry | Roi (%) |
|---|---|
| B2B SaaS | 700 |
| eCommerce | 317 |
| Financial services | 1.091 |
| HVAC Services | 678 |
| Commercial Insurance | 758 |
| Legal Services | 526 |
| Manufacturing | 813 |
| Real Estate | 1.389 |
| Thought Leadership | 748 |
How Long Does SEO Take?
25. On average, you can expect to start seeing positive results (organic traffic and lead generation and conversions) after 6 months of rolling out an SEO campaign.
A recent Ahrefs research found that the average age of a top 10 ranking page is 2+ years. Some lucky ones can get there in 4~6 months though.
Other SEO Statistics
Let’s take a peek at other search engine statistics you need to keep in mind:
Keyword Statistics
26. Only around 7.58% of the keywords available on Ahrefs database get 10+ monthly searches – the other 92.42% get less than 10 searches every month.
27. 0.16% of the most popular keywords generate about 60.67% of all queries.
28. Keywords with just two words make up 70.87% of all keywords that get more than 10,000 searches.
29. About 8% of searches are framed as questions.
Backlinks Statistics
30. Backlinks are one of top three ranking factors, according to official Google search result statistics. In generic terms, the more backlinks a page has, the higher its chances of getting good rankings on Google.
31. However, it’s quite shocking to find out that the majority (66.31%) of web pages out there have zero backlinks.
32. Perhaps business owners generally balk at the cost of getting backlinks. The average cost of buying a link is $361.
33. Also, 73.6% of domains with backlinks have reciprocal links – the sites they link to also link back to them.
User & Behavior Statistics
All these stats boil down to one thing – enhancing user experience. Here are stats showing how users behave based on their experiences and search engine demographics:
34. A consumer spends about 13 minutes, 45 secs reading reviews before making a decision to buy or not.
35. 65% of people pull out their phones to search for more information the moment they decide to make a purchase.
36. Among them, 79% actually take a decisive step on their phone leading towards the purchase.
37. On average, people take at least 9 days to consider their options before deciding on their purchase
38. And 39% of customers make buying decisions based on results from their searches.
Wrapping Up
These SEO facts and figures barely even scratch the surface of information on the trends that’ll dominate the organic search industry going forward.
However, these are the most important, pointing to the areas where improvement can bring the quickest result.
Every business needs to embrace and explore these SEO stats, from small to big, local to international.
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