37 Shocking SEO Stats You Need to Know to Grow Your Business
SEO Statistics That Will Fuel Growth in 2020 and Beyond!
SEO is definitely one of the most difficult and daunting forms of online marketing to get into and to do well. Google has made it increasingly difficult to rank with the rigorous quality standard set by algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin, and Medic. However, it’s still possible to rank in organic search and use the organic traffic as the backbone of your company’s lead or revenue generation pipeline. These SEO stats will remove some of the mystery around search engine optimization so you can start building your company’s future today.
Organic SEO Stats for 2020
Google’s search algorithm is incredibly sophisticated, but it’s still just a simple machine with inputs (ranking factors) and outputs (search results). Understanding how the machine works and what the inputs are will help you take advantage of, and possibly partially control, the output. These SEO statistics will give you insight on how you can start seeing a massive influx of organic traffic.
- Google uses over 200 ranking factors to algorithmically rank billions of websites. (Backlinko)
- There are 5.6 billion searches performed on Google every single day. (Internet Live Stats)
- 75% of users don’t scroll past page 1 and 59% click on one of the first 3 results. (HubSpot / Advanced Web Ranking)
- Slow websites with long load times have a higher bounce rate than optimized websites. (Section.io)
- Websites with low bounce rates typically rank better in Google. (Backlinko)
- Nearly 60% of pages that rank highly in Google are 3+ years old. (AHRefs)
- The average time to see organic traffic growth from SEO is as early as 4 month and up to 1 year. (Search Engine Journal)
- If you get hit by a penalty or filter, it can take 12 months or more to recover. (Search Engine Round Table)
- The three most important ranking signals are content, backlinks, and Rank Brain. (Search Engine Watch)
- The average content length for top ranking pages is roughly 2,400 words. (Quick Sprout)
- Having a large number of low quality pages indexed by Google can be incredibly detrimental to your site’s authority and inbound traffic. (Neil Patel)
Mobile SEO Statistics for 2020
There’s no mistaking it. Mobile is here to stay and it’s growing fast. Users are on their smartphones more than ever before and this presents businesses with an enormous opportunity to directly reach their potential customers on their preferred device. Learning as much as you can from these SEO stats will help you formulate a strategy to grow your company’s mobile presence.
- Google has shifted to a mobile first indexing model which uses the mobile version of your site for indexing & ranking. (Google)
- 87% of smartphone owners search for something at least once per day. (Go Globe)
- 76% of users that search on mobile are looking for something nearby. (Google)
- Mobile search has grown by 188% since 2013. (Statista)
- 96% of all mobile searches were on Google (Statista)
- Nearly 60% of all searches on Google were performed on mobile devices. (Search Engine Land)
- The click through rate (CTR) on mobile devices is roughly half of what it is on desktop. (Spark Toro)
- Search query length is consistent across desktop and mobile devices. (Moz)
- 34% of eCommerce sales in 2017 were on mobile devices and they’re projected to be 54% by 2021. (Big Commerce)
- Mobile will be responsible for more than $3.56 trillion in sales by 2021. (Oberlo)
Local SEO Stats for 2020
Local brick and mortars live and die by how much foot traffic comes through their doors. Google uses a more specialized subset of ranking factors to help local businesses take a prominent position in search when users look for something locally. By factoring in a local SEO strategy, your business can be there when your potential customers look for you.
- 71% of people confirm the location of a business before going there for the first time. (Go Globe)
- 76% of people visit a local business 1 day after performing a local search on a smartphone. (Google)
- 46% of all searches in Google are for local businesses or information. (Go Globe)
- The first search result on mobile gets 24.46% of all clicks. (Chat Meter)
- Listings after the 6th result get < 2% of all clicks on mobile. (Chat Meter)
- “Where to buy” + “near me” searches have more than doubled in the past 2 years. (Google)
- 28% of searches for local businesses result in an offline purchase. (Google)
- 88% of users trust company reviews as much as a recommendation from a friend or family member. (Search Engine Land)
- Location based coupons increased revenue by up to 9,916%. (WordStream)
Backlinking Stats for 2020
Even with algorithm updates like Penguin, earning backlinks is still the gold standard when it comes to building your website’s authority. There is a ton of data and SEO stats that prove Google is still using link building as one of their top ranking factors.
- Nearly 90% of all pages don’t rank in Google because 66% of pages have zero backlinks. (AHRefs)
- Search engine rankings scales with the number of referring domains pointed at a page. (AHRefs)
- There is a direct correlation between the length of a piece of content and the number of backlinks it earns. (Search Engine Land)
- Long content generally receives 77% more backlinks that shorter articles. (Backlinko)
- Almost 45% of top ranking pages have reciprocal links, meaning that they link to one another. (AHRefs)
- 35% of companies dedicate less than $1,000 of their monthly marketing budget to link building. (Moz)
- 70% of marketers spend up to 50% of their time on link acquisition in 2016. (Search Engine Land)
Conclusion
Hopefully these SEO stats helped clear up some of the mystery surrounding search engine optimization.
It is a complicated field that’s equal parts science and art, but it can be an incredibly lucrative investment for your business if you take the time to understand how it works.
Let us know in the comments section below which SEO statistic was the most surprising or if there are any other stats you’d like to know about!