100 SEO Statistics to Help You Update Your Strategy for 2023

Are you looking for up-to-date SEO statistics to help you map your strategy? 

The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is complex and requires plenty of planning. Creating a website or small business means you have to think carefully about your SEO strategy if you want to see your brand thrive. Understanding key SEO statistics will help you make smart and thoughtful marketing decisions in the future. 

We decided to compile a mega-list of 100 SEO statistics with the goal of helping you get a better handle on your SEO so that you can get more email subscribers, sales, and traffic. 

Before we look at the stats, we’re going to answer a very important question:

“What is SEO?”

Once we define the term, we’ll go over stats across various industries and platforms to get a better understanding of SEO and its impact on your website.

Let’s get started! 

We want to help you navigate our compiled SEO statistics as quickly and efficiently as possible. Here’s a table of contents you can use to find the section that appeals to you. 

What Is SEO? 

First, let’s explain what search engine optimization (SEO) is.

Essentially, SEO is the process of optimizing your site to rank high in search engines like Google so you can get more traffic to your site. The goal is to eventually make it to the first page of Google for your chosen keywords. 

Yes, but what do keywords really mean, you may think?

Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your site’s content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines. They can also be called “search queries.” You want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

With that said, making it to the elusive first page of Google means that more people will find your website, which opens the door to some pretty exciting marketing opportunities. 

You can strengthen your SEO ranking in many ways. Some businesses focus heavily on optimizing their website and fine-tuning their XML sitemap.

Others spend their time creating blog content and building a consistent traffic source from platforms like Facebook and YouTube, which correlates with improved search engine rankings.

In fact, high-quality content and link building are two of the most important ranking factors according to Search Engine Land.

The truth is, you need to consider all of this if you want to make your website accessible to a broad audience. 

But that’s only the beginning. 

SEO is complex and can take some time to fully grasp, especially if you’re new to blogging or running a small business. The journey to the front page of Google requires you to think carefully and use SEO statistics to make your content and marketing decisions. 

Now that we’ve defined SEO, let’s move on to the statistics. 

Google Ranking Factor Statistics

You can’t talk about SEO without bringing Google and ranking factors into the conversation. Google is the largest search engine in the world, and the most frequently visited website of all time.

As you can see, the number of Google searches increases every year. 

Because of Google’s popularity, its ranking system for websites based on search relevance and performance is the standard used by virtually all business owners. 

In addition, Google uses over 200 factors in its algorithm for ranking websites. These SEO ranking factors include domain age, keywords, mobile friendliness, number of internal links, and much more.

Check out some more interesting Google ranking factor stats:

• Out of all of the website traffic in the world, 92.47% goes through Google  
• 68% of online experiences start with a search engine
• Believe it or not, Google receives over 7.8 billion searches every single day
• Research shows that 75% of searchers don’t bother clicking past the results on the first page
• The first 5 results for a given search account for 67% of all clicks
•  91% of all websites never receive organic traffic from Google due to not having backlinks
• 54.31% of search queries contain 3 or more words
• The average person searches for something online 3-4 times a day
• Analysts predict that between 16% and 20% of all user searches are brand new keywords and phrases, which should get you excited about optimizing your content for new keywords

According to Backlinko pages with shorter URLs are often given favor in search rankings, as well as sites with a lower bounce rate and faster loading times. 

Note: Check your loading times with IsItWP’s FREE speed test to see where you stand!

Google is also using CTR (Click-Through-Rate) as a ranking factor.

As you can see, the more people you get to click through to your website, the better page rank you’ll get in search results.

In addition, Search Engine Journal states that Google introduces thousands of changes to its search engine algorithm every year. With that said, if you want to win at SEO, you have to play by Google’s rules.

Local SEO Statistics

According to Google, 46% of all Google searches are local. Local SEO is a little different from traditional SEO. Instead of targeting a global audience, it’s all about reaching people who live in a specific place. 

Business owners that have brick-and-mortar locations may take to the internet to promote their brand. Similarly, companies that offer a service like plumbing or electrical work use local SEO to reach their target audience. 

You’ll want to target keywords that use words that focus on location. If you have a sushi restaurant, you would want to use a keyword like “Sushi restaurants near me.”

It’s also important that you list your business on Google so you can appear in the rankings. Include information about your company that new customers may need to know, such as your business hours, phone number, and address. 

Including this information makes it easier for people to contact your company, which leads to more sales and visibility. 

Now, let’s continue with some interesting local SEO statistics.

The terms “Where to buy” and “near me” increased 200% over the past 2 years and search queries for “(store) near me” have grown 250% over the same 2 years. You might be surprised to learn that 28% of local business searches eventually turn into a sale. 

Around one-third of all searches mention specific locations and 97% of people learn about local companies online more than anywhere else. 

Not to forget the growing number of mobile users. Did you know that 18% of smartphone users made a same-day purchase after performing a local search? When asked, 54% of mobile users said they look up hours of local businesses, while 53% looked up directions. 

As a result, 56% of local businesses that don’t have a listing on Google are losing out on potential customers. This statement is reinforced by the fact that 72% of people that use local search end up visiting a store within 5 miles. 

4 out of 5 consumers say they want more personalized offers that relate to their location, and about 70% of people said that businesses should put call and direction buttons in their ads.  

More importantly, allowing reviews for your local business can increase visibility and result in 73% more consumers trusting your brand. 

On a final note, long-tail keywords, such as those used when coming up with local keywords, generate 70% more traffic when compared to commonly used shorter words.

Tips for Boosting Your Local SEO

Want to boost your Local SEO so you drive more foot traffic to your business?

Here are a few local SEO tips to get you started:

• Optimize for local keywords
• Creating a Google My Business account and completing your profile
• Submit your site to local business directories
• Getting more reviews from your happy customers
• Writing content based on local news and events

If you want more details on how to optimize your website, please check out our ultimate WordPress SEO guide or blog post SEO checklist. 

eCommerce and Small Business SEO Statistics

We can’t have a list of SEO stats and not mention the importance of SEO for eCommerce and small business owners. Brands around the globe work on improving their SEO, so they can reach a broad audience that’s interested in their product or service.

Business owners and marketing teams have a ton of cool tools they can use to boost their SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) position. 

The general theme is that you want to get as many businesses and consumers as possible to find out about your brand through social media, email, and browsing Google.  

Let’s look at several small business and eCommerce SEO statistics you should keep in mind if you want to see your website make it to page 1 for your keywords. 

An impressive 35% of all product searches begin with Google, and on average, 40% of revenue comes from organic visitors. This is the free traffic that’s the most desirable for businesses, as well as for consumers it seems since 70-80% tend to ignore paid content in favor of organic results. 

In fact, leads from search engines have a 14.6% conversion rate, which beats out outbound marketing practices like cold calling by over 700%. Actually, 51% of traffic from B2B and B2C sites comes from search engines.

Did you know that businesses spend close to $5,000 every month on their SEO strategy, and will spend $79.27 billion on SEO by the end of the year?

On-page content, such as your blog, can increase traffic by as much as 2000%, which can directly impact your SEO ranking.

Similarly, businesses that blog get 524% more pages indexed by Google, and 72% of business owners and marketers claim that content creation is their number tool for improving SEO.

Moving up 1 search engine results page (SERP) will boost your click-through rate by an average of 30.8%, which is fantastic. To be able to do this, it could be a good idea to pay extra attention to Backlinko’s research indicating that pages with at least one image, such as product pages, rank higher than businesses that only have descriptions.

What is becoming more important for eCommerce businesses, is that the demand for same-day shipping is up 120% compared to 2015, and that trend seems consistent today. They better get their logistics on track so they can respond to this increased demand for same-day shipping.

Tips for Boosting Your eCommerce SEO

Boosting your eCommerce SEO is one of the best ways to generate inbound leads and increase sales. Here are a few ways you can ensure your eCommerce website performs well in search:

• Optimize for speed
• Make it easy to navigate through the different posts and pages
• Create content that meets user intent
• Fix any broken links and optimize your 404 page
• Design a strategic internal link building strategy
• Proactively build backlinks to your pages

Finally, according to Chat Meter responding to positive and negative feedback can help you improve your SEO ranking.

Video SEO Statistics

Optimizing videos for SEO is now an extremely common practice. The surge of mobile devices and the ability to show YouTube results on Google make this a strategy you don’t want to miss out on. 

You can optimize your videos by including transcripts, creating a catchy title, and by using a thumbnail that matches the content, just to name a few things. Like other areas of SEO, all of these small tweaks can lead to significant results. 

Let’s explore some video SEO stats so we can learn more about this brand-building technique. 

To make you understand the incredible power of video content, we want to start by sharing that YouTube users watch 1 billion hours of content every day. And according to Marketing Charts, it’s estimated that by 2021, the average person will watch 100 minutes of video content every day. 

Imagine that!

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, with over 1.9 billion active monthly users, so this is a great source to tap into.

One of Render Forest’s surveys revealed that only 7 out of 10 marketers optimize their videos for search-ability, which is a bad judgment since 85% of consumers in the United States only watch video content.

Imagine the whole world!

Although, 92% of marketers say they plan on adding videos to their marketing strategy. They should really consider this based on the fact that 88% of marketers say that video delivers a positive return on investment. 

For instance, you’re 53% more likely to appear on the first page of Google if you add videos to your site, and you can also increase your organic SERP traffic by 157%. That will surely lead to more conversions.

The truth is that landing pages with videos get 80% more conversions. Including a video on your landing page also increases your chances of appearing on page 1 of Google by 53%.

Last but not least, we’ve already mentioned the importance of blog content. Blog posts with videos have a stunning 53x greater chance of making it to the first page of Google, and adding videos to your blog posts can help you get 3x more inbound links.

Tips for Boosting Your Video SEO

Video SEO is slightly different from traditional SEO for written content. However, to boost your chances of ranking, here are a few factors:

• Include a keyword-optimized transcript in the description
• Include your focus keyword in the video title, video file, and metadata
• Use relevant hashtags
• Select the right video category
• Create and optimize a video sitemap

With video fast becoming the most preferred content format, ranking your videos high on YouTube and other search engines has never been important. Use the video SEO stats and tips above to rank your videos high and drive traffic to your business. 

Voice Search SEO Statistics

Voice search is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways consumers find out about brands around the world.

Optimizing your website for voice search means understanding what a consumer will likely say, instead of type. Strangely enough, these two things are often different, and choosing the right keywords for voice optimization is crucial. 

It’s now more convenient for people to simply talk into their phones or smart speakers instead of opening Google every time they have a question. Business owners and marketers realized that this trend was picking up early and got to work. 

If you haven’t started yet, don’t worry. It’s not too late to gear your site towards people using voice search. 

But before you get started, here are some helpful voice search SEO statistics. 

The amazingly large number of 45 million people use voice assistants every single day, and Google Assistant usage has increased by 400% in the last year. 

Edison Research and NPR mean that 1 in 6 Americans owns a smart speaker, making voice a common way to browse the internet, and  22% with smart speakers use their devices to buy products. This goes hand in hand with the fact that 40% of millennials use voice search to buy things online.

What is more, 61% of people between the ages of 25 and 64 claim that they plan on using their smart speaker for searching more in the future, and it’s predicted that 55% of households will soon have a smart speaker. 

Almost 20% of all voice searches are triggered by 1 word in a set of 25. The three most common trigger words include how, what, and best. Furthermore, the average word count of a voice search result page is 2,312 words.

And for all shopping lovers, did you know that Amazon and Google are responsible for 94% of smart speakers used by consumers?

You may also be surprised to learn that 40.7% of voice search responses come directly from featured snippets. 

As mentioned earlier, turning your blog posts into video content can improve your organic traffic on that post by 157%. According to Backlinko comments on your YouTube videos play a significant role in your ranking on search engines. 

Tips to Optimize for Voice Search

Optimizing your site and content for voice search is easy if you know what to do. A few things to prioritize include:

• Create conversational content
• Include FAQ sections on your posts
• Optimize for local SEO
• Optimize to rank for featured snippets

 Voice search is here to stay. If can optimize for it you’ll succeed in tapping into an area of search that can drive conversion-ready leads.

Mobile SEO Statistics

Mobile SEO ties into many of the topics we’ve talked about today. Specifically, video and voice search have hit such a high level of success due to smartphone and tablet users.

When you’re optimizing your site or social media for SEO, you have to think carefully about the experience you’re providing for your mobile users. Sites that are not mobile-friendly can’t get ranked on Google, so mobile readiness is a factor you need to consider.

Don’t worry, we have your back. Here are some mobile SEO statistics that will help you get started:

• 6.6 billion people have mobile devices, and over 51% of internet traffic comes from smartphones and tablets
• Google drives 96% of mobile traffic, and 87% of all mobile users interact with a search engine daily 
• The first organic search result for any given keyword gets 27.7% of all clicks, and 79% of all keywords show different Google results depending on whether a user is on desktop or mobile
• 16.8 billion smart speaker devices were shipped out by Amazon, Google, Apple, and other brands
• Mobile voice searches are 3x more likely to be based on a specific location
• 60% of smartphone users have bought a product that they discovered by using a search engine

We obviously like our smartphones. According to Emarketer, most people spend 3 hours and 35 minutes on their smartphones every day. 

In addition, Search Engine Land states that websites that aren’t mobile-friendly don’t rank on Google. Based on the fact that 61% of mobile users will contact a website if they discover a business website with a mobile-friendly layout it’s extremely important to ensure your site is mobile friendly.

Tips for Boosting Your Mobile SEO

You’ve seen the mobile SEO stats. They all point to one thing — you must optimize for mobile. Here are a few tips to help you do just that:

• Build your site with mobile in mind (use a responsive theme)
• Optimize for speed
• Create a seamless experience between desktop and mobile
• Optimize your content for mobile by using short sentences and paragraphs

Failing to give users a positive mobile experience is unacceptable in this day and age. You stand to miss out on more than half the traffic on the internet.

Search Engine Marketing Statistics

Search engine marketing, also known as SEM, is an extremely popular marketing tactic that you can use for more growth. Simply put, SEM is a strategy where brands try to increase their visibility on search engines by using paid advertisements. 

The goal is to get more people to click on your website, which will help you get more conversions and grow your lead list. We think that SEM is best used when combined with other areas of SEO, and experts agree. 

Data from SEM campaigns can help you learn more about your target audience, which in turn opens the door for more optimization opportunities.  

Let’s show you some stats that confirm this statement. For starters, the average company sees a 200% ROI with Google Ads, and 86% of experts use PPC (Pay Per Click) data to improve their SEO strategy.

This is a smart move because stats show that if a consumer clicks a PPC advertisement, they are 50% more likely to buy a product when compared to organic traffic. They have higher shopping intent.

As a matter of fact, one survey revealed that 75% of participants found paid search ads made finding what they were looking for easier, and 26% of people clicked on paid advertisements because they were familiar with the brand.

Additionally, 33% of respondents said they click on paid search ads because the promotional post answers their query. 

Not really surprising considering Google is the search giant, and in 2019, Google made over $134 billion in profits from prioritized search ads. However, the spending on text ads went down 14%, but shopping on Google increased by 41% between 2018 and 2019.  

Google is probably not crying crocodile tears since its advertising and search tools helped the company bring a staggering $330 billion to the U.S. market in 2018. 

Tips for Boosting Your SEM Results

While SEM leverages the pay-to-play system, it’s still a competitive marketing strategy. To ensure you get a good return on advertising spend (ROAS):

• Focus on keywords that meet search intent
• Target your ads carefully
• Don’t overlook negative keywords
• Ensure your ads and landing pages match
• Always split test as much as possible

Use tools like Google Analytics to track campaign performance to know what’s working and what needs tweaking.

Off-Page SEO Statistics

Off-page SEO is one of the most important aspects of growing your business. If other brands and websites aren’t linking to your company, and people aren’t sharing your posts on social media, you’re going to have a hard time ranking on Google. 

Luckily, there are plenty of ways for you to improve your off-page SEO. We want to help you unravel the mystery once and for all by looking at some compelling off-page SEO stats. 

To start with, there’s a strong correlation between social media popularity and SEO ranking on Google. This is due to the fact that social media content is extremely shareable, so your site will get more traffic and visibility. 

For instance, articles shared on social media see a 22% performance increase compared to those not shared. Google even crawls social media for relevant information. It’s no surprise that 91% of marketers spend time optimizing their profiles for maximum exposure. 

Better yet, websites with blogs tend to get 97% more backlinks, which is one of the most important factors for SEO. 

Generally, the top result on page one for a popular keyword has nearly 35,000 backlinks. Building backlinks may seem like a walk in the park, but it’s not. In fact, 65% of marketers say that building backlinks is the most challenging aspect of SEO. 

And you soon realize the difficulty in building backlinks when studies show that 66.31% of pages don’t have a single backlink. Further research shows that half of the businesses studied use 25% of their budget to build links.

The same research shows that 34% of companies spend an average of $1000 per month on their link building strategy. It adds up!

Ahrefs stats show that the number 1 position for a given keyword gets 5-14% more backlinks from new business websites, and better yet, infographics generate 37.5% more backlinks than traditional content. 

Tips for Boosting Your Off-page SEO

While of-page SEO takes place away from your website, you still have a hand in 

A few ways you can do just that include:

• Proactively build backlinks
• Have a strategic guest posting plan
• Leverage social media marketing to drive traffic and boost social signals
• Build a positive brand image and monitor your brand reputation

Because off-page SEO works like third-party endorsements, search engines place a lot of value on it. That’s why you must invest in designing and deploying a robust off-page SEO strategy.

SEO Statistics: Insightful Data to Benchmark Your SEO and Business Growth

There you have it! 

We’ve now looked at over 100 SEO statistics that you can use to grow your business. You’re not going to see your business climb through the ranks overnight, but making it to page 1 of Google is entirely possible. 

SEO is a lot like life, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it.

If you want to see your site beat the competitors and get tons of organic traffic, you have to put in the effort to optimize your brand for search optimization across all platforms. 

Thankfully, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) makes the SEO process easy!

AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin, and it offers all the tools you’ll need to easily and efficiently optimize your site and improve search engine rankings.

Not using AIOSEO yet? What are you waiting for?