30 SEO statistics that prove the power of search

What is SEO?

SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of getting organic traffic from the search results of search engines like Google. Search engines have bots that analyse (through a process called “crawling and indexing”) billions of pages of pages and ranks them based on how well it matches the search query.

As mentioned above, organic results are what is earnt through SEO, not paid results. Paid results are relatively easy to spot – they are labelled with “Ad” prior to their headline and normally include slightly more detail to organic results (for example, contact details). However, due to the format of search engine result pages (SERPs), it is becoming more difficult to spot organic searches within the ads and dynamic results.

Dynamic results (often referred to as SERP features) are things like “People also ask”, image carousels, and direct answers to your questions. For example, if you ask “What is the weather today?” Your first result will be a weather forecast rather than a link. I wouldn’t use this as an excuse not to think about SEO though, as some of these results are organic and are influenced by SEO. These include featured snippets, which is an organic result which is displayed through an answer inside a box.

Why is SEO important?

You may think that paid advertising and social media are the best ways to generate traffic to website, however most online traffic is driven by search engines. SEO is also the only form of marketing that, when set up correctly, can continue to drive traffic to your website over time. If you create a solid piece of content that deserves to continuously rank high for the correct keywords, then your traffic will continuously increase, whereas advertising needs continuous funding to direct traffic to your site.

SEO methods are always changing, with search engines becoming smarter and using new tactics to rank pages, it is becoming harder to trick them into thinking your page should rank higher. Search engines used to crawl through pages looking only for keywords, the more times a keyword appeared on your page, the higher you would rank for it. However, Google has brough in new software, which ranks based on relevance and how you can solve the searchers query. Marketers therefore need to ensure your site is optimized to help deliver better information to search engines. This will make sure that they can properly index your content and rank it higher within search results.

If you still don’t believe that SEO is important to you and your business, then these statistics should help you out.

 

Organic traffic statistics:

1. 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
2. The first Google organic search result gets 5% average traffic share.
3. The average share generated by sites listed on the first Google search results page is 5%.
4. 57% of B2B marketers state that SE0 generates more leads than any other marketing.
5. The average search result on Google’s first page result contains 1,890 words.
6. 90% of searchers haven’t made their mind up about a brand before starting their search.
7. 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.
8. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t.
9. Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.
10. Search is the #1 traffic source to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.
11. 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position on Google, 10% go to the #2 position, and 7% go to #3 position.
12. Bounce rate increases by 50% if your website takes 2 seconds extra to load.
13. 64% of marketers actively invest time in SEO.
14. 55% of marketers consider SEO “very important” or “extremely important” to their overall marketing strategy.
15. The average user searches for about 3 words in their search query.

Paid vs. Organic:

16. Only 4% of paid advertisements on Google result in a click.
17. 70-80% of people choose to only click on organic search results, ignoring paid search results.
18. Over 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic.
19. 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search.
20. 10% of all website traffic comes from paid search.

Google statistics:

21. 1 billion+ people use Google search every month.
22. Google processes at least 63,000 searches every second.
23. The average Google search session is under 1 minute.

Mobile statistics:

24. 52% of web traffic worldwide is mobile.
25. 87% of smartphone users use search engines at least once a day.
26. Over 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone.
27. 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site.
28. 30% of all mobile searches are related to location.
29. On average Google shows 5 organic mobile search results.
30. 40% of mobile website visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

 

In summary:

• Search engine optimisation is essential to your business’s success.
• In most cases, investing in search engine optimisation will prove more successful than investing in paid advertising.
• You could be losing a high percentage of your customers if your website isn’t mobile friendly.
• Content is still king when it comes to SEO.

If you’re still unsure about SEO, or you’d like us to review your business and make some recommendations. Shoot us an email on hello@creativeapproach.com.au and we’ll be more than happy to help you.