Search engine optimization is an inevitable part of every business digital marketing campaign. As more and more businesses struggle to control the SERPs, you should make every effort to get top search engine rankings. SEO services can always help you do this, but before hiring a professional, you should know the fascinating SEO statistics.

So here's a list of 128 incredible SEO stats and figures, depending on various factors you can't miss in 2022.

What does this article cover?

SEO Strategy Statistics

SEO and Content Marketing Statistics

Local SEO Statistics

Common Google Statistics

Ecommerce SEO Statistics

User and search behavior statistics

Mobile SEO Statistics

Voice Search Statistics

Video SEO Statistics

Organic Traffic Statistics

Search engine stats that will come into play in 2022 and beyond SEO Strategy Statistics

Have you ever wondered how your SEO strategy fits into your digital meeting strategy? Time to do it! You should show your superiors the most important statistics to grow your online business, focusing on SEO.

You can also compare your SEO strategy with other marketers to check if you're on the right track.

Here are the most important SEO strategy statistics:

• SEO has 20 times the traffic opportunity on desktop and mobile than PPC.

• 82% of marketers say the effectiveness of SEO is increasing, with 42% saying it is increasing abnormally.

• 61% of marketers say SEO improvement and organic presence growth are top priorities for inbound marketing.

• Google is the leading search engine, accounting for 92.42% of global search traffic, followed by Bing (2.96%) and Yahoo (1.51%).

• The initial search result for any query gets an average of 20.5% of clicks on a page, dropping to 13.32% for the second search result and 13.14% for the third search result.

• 41% of large companies consider link building one of the hardest SEO techniques.

• 70% to 80% of search engine users only focus on organic search results.

• Organic search accounted for 51% of website traffic, while social media platforms accounted for 5%, paid search accounted for 10%, and other sources accounted for 34%.

• In 2018 alone, U.S. agencies and brands invested $72.02 billion in SEO services.

• Most businesses invest upwards of $5,000 per month in SEO.

• 84% of marketing professionals say they outsource all or part of their SEO services to experts.

• Marketers who combined PPC advertising and organic SEO in their marketing techniques saw an average 25% and 27% increase in clicks and profits compared to those using only one search engine marketing strategy.

SEO and Content Marketing Statistics

Since content is the "king" in the digital world, it should be your top priority when it comes to SEO. Remember, you should never consider separating SEO from your content marketing strategy.

High-quality and rich content helps you inform, engage, impress and win your largest target customers. You also need to create original and valuable content to increase your brand awareness on the SERPs.

If you draft the right content (such as blogs, articles, web pages, product pages, "about us" pages, testimonials, and videos), you'll have a solid foundation for all other SEO techniques.

Have you ever wondered how important content is to your SEO strategy and what trends you should follow to reach your target audience?

Check out the important statistics below to understand the importance of SEO and content marketing:

• Sites with blogs tend to have 434% more indexed pages than sites without blogs.

• On-page content development applies to SEO for 57% of marketing professionals.

• Brand websites that include blogs have a 97% increase in internal links, ultimately improving your SEO performance.

• 61% of B2B marketers focus on SEO and search engine algorithms to improve review marketing results.

• If you refresh your previously published blog with new content and images, it increases organics by as much as 111%.

• Adding video to blog posts can increase organic traffic to search engine results by 157%.

• 45% of companies say content marketing is largely integrated into their SEO strategy.

• According to Andrey Lipattsev, senior strategist for search quality at Google, the search engine giant uses high-quality content and link building as the two most important signals to rank your site in search engine results.

• Google's first page search results average 1890 words.

• The average length of long-form content (which attracts more links and shares than short-form content) should contain more than 1,000 words.

• 1 in 10 blog posts are composite, meaning that organic search drives more traffic over time.

• About 25% of Google searches include at least one video at a time.

• 7 out of 10 marketing experts optimize video for SEO.

Local SEO Statistics

Local SEO is the process of optimizing a brand’s online presence to drive more sales and profits from relevant local searches. Such local searches appear as local search results on the results pages of Google and other leading search engines. For example, if you search for "continental food restaurants" on your smartphone, you can find local search results.

Remember, local SEO is not just about Google search results. People look for local businesses online through different search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Apple Maps, and Yelp.

If you haven't optimized your site for local search, check out these local SEO stats below to understand why it matters:

• From 2015 to 2017, Google searches for "near me" increased by 500%.

• 0.09% of Google search results attract a Google Maps click.

• 18% of local mobile searches result in a purchase within a day.

• 53% of users search for directions to a local store.

• 50% of customers visit a retail store within 24 hours of a local mobile search.

• 65% of people use a smartphone when making a serious purchase.

• 56% of local businesses don't yet list themselves on Google My Business.

• 86% of users find business locations on Google Maps.

• 46% of online searches have local intent.

• 78% of all location-centric mobile searches lead to offline purchases.

• 54% of smartphone users search for business hours online.

• Four out of five customers look for local information through search engines.

• 30% of mobile internet searches are focused on location.

Common Google Statistics

Today, the total number of people using Google worldwide is about 4 million, and the search engine market share exceeds 90%. When listing important SEO statistics, it needs to include certain fascinating numbers from Google, as it is the search engine giant.

Once you have a solid understanding of Google and how it works, you can modify your SEO strategy accordingly for ultimate success.

• The first Google organic search result received an average traffic share of 33%.

• The average number of organic desktop search results that Google shows on the homepage is 8.59.

• Sites listed on the first Google search results page generate 91.5% of the average online search traffic.

• There are approximately 5.5 billion online searches on Google every day, or more than 63,000 search queries per second in 2019.

• There are more than 4 to 60 billion online searches on Google in the US every month.

• Google currently holds 76% of the entire search engine market share.

• The average organic CTR for the first organic Google search result was 28.5%.

• From the first query to loading the SERPs and selecting results, the average Google search session lasts less than 1 minute.

• The top 5 Google searches for 2021 are "NBA," "DMX," "Gabby Petito," "Kyle Rittenhouse," and "Brian Laundrie."

• When Google launched in September 1998, it averaged only about 10,000 search queries per day.

• Google shows an average of 8.5 organic search results on the first page.

• Google Images accounted for 22.6% of all online searches, while Google Maps accounted for 13%.

• There was a 150% increase in search queries using the "___ to Avoid" format.

• There was an 80% increase in the use of the "_____ is it worth it?" search query format.

• 66% of unique search queries result in one or more clicks on Google search results, while 34% of online searches result in no clicks at all.

• More than 1 billion people search on Google every month.

• 15% of search queries on Google have never been searched before.

• Google has indexed 100 billion web pages, of which about 100,000,000 GB are indexed.

Ecommerce SEO Statistics

When purchasing a product or service from an e-commerce site, customers tend to perform a Google search first. They look for available options, their features, compare them and check other relevant information to make an informed buying decision.

If your business website doesn't show up in the SERPs, you don't have access to genuinely interested and qualified e-commerce customers. Your products may have prominent space online, but you need to make sure they are easy to search online.

SEO is an effective ecommerce website marketing strategy that can significantly increase conversion rates. If you do SEO, it will always show your brand in organic search results.

Here are some important ecommerce SEO statistics:

• Google reiterated that 15% of the billions of online searches that happen in a day are new to them.

• 56% of customers visit Amazon.com first when they want to make a purchase.

• E-commerce sites get 37.5% of all traffic from search results.

• Amazon was the first brand with the largest overall improvement in Google’s organic search performance in 2018, with a 21% increase in search visibility.

• 23.6% of orders on e-commerce sites are directly related to organic traffic.

• 44% of users start their online shopping through a search engine.

• At least 43% of e-commerce traffic comes from Google organic traffic.

• Most people search the web for more information. At least 51% of Internet users discovered new products/services.

• Many search engines use location to provide results to users. At least 30% of search engine results depend on your location.

• Google Maps, Google Search accounts, and Google Images make up at least 92.96% of organic traffic worldwide.

• 0.78% of Google users click on the second page of search results. Therefore, you should work on optimizing your landing page to appear at the top of all search result pages.

• 25.02% of top-ranking pages have meta descriptions on them.

• Guest posting is very expensive for many online businesses, with an average cost of $77.80.

• Many people use mobile phones to browse the Internet. About 52.2% of international website traffic comes from mobile devices.

• 48% use voice search to find general information on the Internet.

• Number one in Google search results gets a 34.36% CTR.

• The top five organic search results accounted for 67.6% of Google clicks.

• Long-tail SEO tactics rank 3% to 6% higher than generic search.

• 44% started shopping online through a search engine.

• 23.6% of e-commerce offers are directly related to organic traffic.

• 56% of customers visit Amazon first if they want to make a serious purchase.

• Of the billions of searches that occur on a given day, 15% of daily searches are new to Google.

User and search behavior statistics

Do you understand how your target audience searches for your business online? You will have a clear idea of this after looking at the following statistics:

• 90% of searchers don’t make a decision about a brand before starting their online search.

• 8% of search queries are framed as questions.

• Google has seen a 60% increase in mobile searches for "_____ for me" over the past two years as searches become personalized. Search engines have also seen an 80% increase in mobile searches for "____ should I ____" over the past 2 years.

• The average user conducts a search that is about 3 words long.

• 95% of users only look at the first page of the SERP.

• 18% of online searches influence searchers to change their query without clicking on any results.

Mobile SEO Statistics

Almost everyone uses a smartphone to search online. Therefore, you should commit to mobile SEO to improve your search engine rankings. Today, people spend a lot of time interacting with the online world in different ways through their mobile devices.

Using a smartphone/tablet is completely different from using a laptop/desktop, including how search engines work. To reach your target audience using a variety of devices, you need to optimize your site not only for search engines on desktop, but also for mobile.

Factors such as user location, device screen size, and operating system affect mobile search optimization. These factors do not affect desktop online searches. If you understand these differences, you can significantly improve your search engine rankings across devices and drive your business growth.

Check out the mobile SEO statistics below, which reflect the huge potential of mobile search. These statistics also reveal some lesser-known trends in how people are getting the responses they need through mobile searches.

Here are the important mobile SEO statistics:

• Businesses receive 52% of global internet traffic from mobile devices.

• 71% of mobile users expect mobile web pages to load as fast or faster than desktop sites.

• Over 50% of smartphone users discover new businesses/products while conducting online searches on their smartphones.

• Nine out of ten mobile searches result in a customer taking any action, and more than 50% result in a purchase.

• The top position on the first page of the Google SERPs has a CTR of 31.28.

• 40.9% of Google searches on mobile devices resulted in organic clicks, 57.1% were not clicks, and 2% were paid clicks.

• Mobile searches for "similar stores" and "similar brands" have increased by more than 60% over the past two years.

Voice Search Statistics

In an interaction with Guy Kawasaki at SXSW Interactive in 2013, Amit Singhal (head of Google) said, "Google's search engine is destined to be the Star Trek computer, and that's what we're building."

So, you must have an idea of the future of Google search technology. Over the past decade, Google has taken extremely effective steps to achieve its lofty goals. This is one of the most significant advances to date in voice search and natural language processing technology.

Many people prefer to search by voice on Google rather than typing words into the search panel. This has led to a rapid increase in voice searches. Have you ever wondered how voice search will affect your SEO performance in 2022 and the next few years?

See how voice search affects the following stats:

• 40.7% of Google Voice search results come from Featured Snippets.

• In the third quarter of 2018, global smart speaker shipments grew by about 200% annually.

• By 2022, 50% of user searches will be voice searches.

• The voice channel is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2022.

• 65% of 25- to 49-year-olds speak to their voice-activated device at least once a day.

• About 30% of online searches are conducted without a screen.

• Today, 27% of the world's online population uses voice search on their mobile phones.

Video SEO Statistics

• Adding videos related to your website content can always help you reach more target customers and convert them into real customers. In addition to adding engaging videos to your website, you should also optimize your videos to increase search engine traffic and visibility.

• You can optimize your videos through a variety of mediums, such as traditional Google searches, where organic search results show more and more videos. Additionally, video SEO involves the act of ranking videos in Google Video Search.

• When it comes to video SEO, most people also think of YouTube as it is one of the largest video search engines in the world. You should always optimize your videos for various search engines, such as YouTube, Google Video Search, and Google Search.

• Since the concept of video SEO is so much newer than traditional search, you tend to rank an hour-long video more easily on the first page of the SERPs than a website.

• Find below key video search statistics reflecting your optimization needs:

• Adding video to blog posts can increase organic traffic to search results by 157%.

• The probability of a video appearing on the first page of Google search results is 11,000:1. Text-oriented results have a 500,000:1 probability of being displayed on the first page of the SERP.

• Videos displayed in the SERPs grew by 75.75% in 2017.

• Video increases the average time users spend on your site by 2 minutes.

• Video search results have a 41% higher click-through rate than text-based results.

• Videos are 50 times more likely to rank organically on the first page than simple text results.

• 88% of Google Videos rank in the top 10 for similar searches on YouTube.

• Blogs with videos attract 3 times as many inbound links as text-oriented blogs.

• Blogs with videos saw a 157% increase in search traffic compared to text-only blog posts.

• Blogs with videos are 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results.

• 1 in 10 blogs are composite, meaning that organic search increases their traffic over time.

• 7 out of 10 marketing experts optimize for video search.

• 62% of millennial and Gen Z customers prefer visual search over any other state-of-the-art technology.

• The average length of a YouTube video on the first search page is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.

• 56.8% of Google search results (returning multiple videos) are in a different order than when you perform the same search on YouTube.

• 55.2% of top-ranking pages on Google searches did not rank first for similar searches on YouTube.

• About 55% of Google searches contain at least one video.

Organic Traffic Statistics

If you're ranking on the first page of Google search results, it doesn't mean you're doing a good job at SEO. You also need to increase organic traffic to your website for relevant searches and inquiries. Whether you're optimizing your site for mobile search traffic or Google Voice Search, you should ultimately aim for the same goal, which is to drive organic or free traffic to your site.

Here are some important organic search engine traffic statistics you should know:

• Google holds the majority of the global search engine market, or 86.82%. Microsoft Bing has the second largest market share in the world.

• The average CTR for the top results in Google’s organic search results is 31.7%. The top organic result is 10 times more likely to be clicked than the 10th-ranked page.

• The initial Google mobile search results attracted an average organic CTR of 26.9%.

• The average CTR for the first organic search result in Google Search is 28.5%.

• Updating previous blog posts and reporting new content and images can increase organic traffic by up to 106%.

• 91% of pages never attract any organic traffic from Google, mainly because they don't contain backlinks, one of the key ranking factors.

• The top five organic search results accounted for only 67.6% of homepage clicks.

• The percentage of browser-oriented Google searches that resulted in unnatural clicks was 45.25%.

Search engine stats that will come into play in 2022 and beyond

Before you start specializing in SEO, you need to know some important relevant statistics.

• Here are some of the most performance-driven search engine stats you can't ignore for 2022 and beyond: 68% of online actions start with a search engine.

• The average CTR of the first position lm desktop is higher than that of mobile, 31.52% and 24.05% respectively.

• The average click-through rate for the top positions of Google search queries is 18.3%. The second place CTR is almost as high as 10.57%.

• 21% of online searches result in more than one click on a Google result.

• Branded searches tend to have higher CTRs at the top of the first Google search results page.

Bottom line

Hopefully, key SEO statistics can help you understand how internet users search today. You may be shocked by the effectiveness of local, voice, and mobile searches.

SEO is an invisible part of your digital marketing strategy. If you want your business to have a huge online presence, reach your biggest target customers and convert them into long-term customers, then you can't go wrong with SEO.

Remember the statistics mentioned above and start developing a strategy to rank well on the SERPs. Make sure to maintain high search engine rankings before you start your business. As the number of global businesses increases, the SEO competition among them tends to intensify.

If you make a small mistake or don't put in enough effort, you could lose your search engine rankings in the blink of an eye. So keep working on SEO to break all the records set by other businesses and rule the SERPs from start to finish.