SEO statistics every business owner should know

23 SEO statistics for 2020

#1: Google accounts for roughly three-quarters of global desktop search traffic

According to data analysis from 2019, Google currently covers roughly 73.60% of all desktop search traffic. Following behind it are:

• Bing – with 11.08 percent
• Baidu – with 10.17 percent
• Yahoo – with 2.62 percent
• Yandex – with 1.24 percent

The conclusion here is obvious – you need to play with the cards Google deals you with. That means that the SEO strategy for your business needs to focus on accommodating the needs of Google before all other search engines. Certainly, ranking high on Bing or Baidu can get you some traffic, but it’s the short straw compared to the one you can tap into through Google.

#2: Google has received roughly 2.3 trillion searches in 2019

People have developed an addiction when it comes to online searches. It’s become second nature for us to go online and search for any information we need throughout the day. And as a result, Google processes over 40.000 search queries each second, which results in over 3.5 billion searches daily.

The majority of consumers today will conduct research online before even starting any negotiations about buying a product or service. Hence, you can understand the importance of investing resources in the web design of your website, making it easy to navigate through and get easy access to relevant content. But to get all those leads to your website, you first need to make sure that you rank high on SERPs. And by focusing your digital marketing efforts on SEO solutions, you can put attract a solid piece of those 2+ trillion searches annually.

#3: 15% of daily searches (over 500 million) are new to Google

It’s important to set your priorities straight when it comes to ranking on Google search results. All companies want to compete for existing keywords and get ahead of their competition. However, why would a business need to stop there? Consumer needs change with coming trends – and nearly a fifth of all daily searches relate to new terms. A business that neglects such potential might miss out on pioneering that next wave of leads for its products or services.

Google’s BERT algorithm best exemplifies how this works. As a “neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) pre-training”, BERT looks for content that has the intent and layout natural to process and educate others. It analyzes the content on your website and can reward you based on the quality of the knowledge you offer. Therefore, investing in new topics can do a lot for your online presence and overall authority in your respective niche.

#4: The first organic result on the first page gets roughly 31.7% of all clicks

As you can already imagine – ranking high on search results brings a lot of value to your online presence. In fact, recent studies show that the #1 position on organic search results can instigate a third of the overall CTR. And when combined with the next four results, you get a total of 67.6 percent of all clicks. So, it is clear why it is essential for companies to rank among the top five results for their target keywords.

The differences between moving up one or two places at the bottom of the search results page are barely noticeable. Marketers need to implement as many innovative and creative approaches as possible to satisfy the expectations of search engines to get to those first positions.

#5: There are over 200 factors that Google’s search algorithm uses to rank websites.

Nobody really knows the inner machinery behind Google’s algorithm. The best thing professional marketers can do is to spend each day following and analyzing SEO trends, all in hopes of gathering as many pieces of the puzzle as possible. At the end of the day, this algorithm is still a mystery and SEO experts are still attempting to pinpoint how SERP ranking operates. So far, research has shown that there are well over 200 factors that influence Google’s algorithm. But there are still so many pieces of the puzzle missing.

#6: Quality content and link building are two fundamental factors for ranking on Google search results

When the entire appeal of SEO and the race for Google’s affections started, companies focused most of their efforts on creating as much content as possible and using black hat tactics to build links toward their website as much as possible. And for a time, that seemed to be enough. However, a lot has changed since then, and Google has raised the stakes, and still continues to do so with its updates.

Now, the quality of content trumps quantity. Therefore, you need to put more effort into the overall intent of your content, making it more engaging and valuable to readers coming to your website. As a result, search engines will recognize this and give it an advantage over other similar pieces of content.

The next step in gaining value toward your website in the eyes of Google is to ensure a strong linking network. Focusing on link earning through the quality of your content rather than link building is the new way to boost organic traffic and gain value.

#7: According to nearly 60% of marketers, on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic.

Content is king in terms of SEO effectiveness. And this is something that more than half of professional marketers will tell you, with the percentage growing year after year. Taking the time to:

• invest in on-page optimization;
• create quality content that is both engaging and shareable;
• offer visual appeal in the form of images, infographics, videos, testimonials, etc.

All this raises the bar, making the need for lengthier content pieces grow every year.

#8: The average content length for the top positioned Google articles equals 2,416 words.

People often wonder about the length of their pages or posts when it comes to gaining the best worth on search engines. And research shows that the best results come from content that hits the 2000+ words mark. This word count is more than enough to answer most if not all of your readers’ questions in regards to a certain topic.

However, bear in mind that the length of your post is worth nothing if it has no structure to stand on. You still need to focus on quality through transparency and honesty. Only by doing that will you be able to pique the interest of online visitors and gain backlinks and traffic to that content.

This statement also applies to voice search results, as Google has shown a liking toward articles over 2000 words when it comes to voice search answers. So, if you are tempted to keep your posts short so as not to scare off leads with wasting too much time, don’t. Instead, focus on voicing their concerns through quality content that has over 2000 words of detailed insight for their queries.

#9: 91% of all pages without backlinks never get any organic traffic from Google as a result

According to a study conducted in 2018, the importance of word count fell behind the need for having backlinks that lead towards individual inner pages of a website. Content and word count are essential, yes – but without having the link building and earning tactics to back them up, Google will make sure nobody ever gets to see them. That is why strengthening your inner pages as well as your homepage is so important, which leads us to the next among our SEO statistics every business owner should be aware of…

#10: Roughly 56% of inner pages don’t have a single backlink.

The same study we mentioned previously concluded that more than half of existing pages lack backlinks. And 30 percent of all pages have three or fewer backlinks leading toward them. That means that we have less than 15 percent of all pages that are actually optimized enough to earn proper value and organic traffic through backlinks. Any experienced marketer can recognize the potential that exists in knowing this simple fact. Get more backlinks to your content and you can climb your way to the very top of SERPs.

#11: The five essential technical SEO factors to invest in: website visits, time spent on site, pages per session, bounce rate, and page loading speed

Once you establish quality content and link building, you still need to keep visitors on your website. And to do that, you need to ensure that your web development team is up to the task. Your website optimization can influence the experience users will have once they reach your website. This is where the importance of technical SEO comes into play, and why the following five factors top all others:

• Website visits
• Time spent on the website
• Number of pages seen per session
• Bounce Rate
• Page loading speed

#12: In the past year, 51.74% of all online traffic came from mobile phones

Mobile device users have been taking up a larger piece of online traffic cake for the past several years. And as time passes, the percentage continues to grow, as more people rely on mobile devices for quick access to data online. As a result, we can monitor the change in global online traffic, depending on the device people are using. Based on that counter, we can see that in the past year:

• 51.74% of all online traffic came from mobile users
• 45.61% of all online traffic came from desktop users
• 2.65% of all online traffic came from tablet users

Remember that this is a stat on a global scale. So, you still need to consider whether or not it applies to your particular niche as much. However, the conclusion here is that you need to maintain a responsive web design for your website no matter the environment you operate in. Mobile device users are the future and you should invest in gathering traffic from them. Your website needs to be responsive to gather attention and value from Google.

#13: 36% of SEO experts think the headline/title tag is the most important SEO element.

According to a survey, 36% of SEO professionals consider the headline of your page or post is the most important element in your content strategy. Certainly, focusing on the content itself is crucial, but it’s the headline or title tag that will get the readers interested to start off with. Not only that, but it also helps search engines identify the overall topic of your content, making it simpler to rank it on search results. So, make sure to take your time when thinking up a headline for your page and test it with a group that understands your target audience.

#14: Long-tail keyword searches have a 3-5% higher CTR than generic searches.

With so much content out there today, it can be difficult to find the right answers for your search query. Therefore, people tend to make their searches more specific by using long-tail keywords (four words or longer). And those are the keywords you want to optimize your content for. In fact, research shows that the CTR for long-tail keywords is 3-5% higher than for generic keywords. So, instead of attempting to focus on generic searches, try creating unique content for customized long-tail phrases.

#15: 70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC.

In the beginning, it was much simpler to invest in PPC and see results for your business. SEO was still in the development stages, making it a long-term commitment that most companies were not willing to make. Today, digital marketing has come to a point where it is constantly developing and growing its influence. And more and more companies have come to realize this, investing more resources into it as a result.

As a result of this turn of events, PPC has lost the overall dominance it had over SEO. Now, when you have a battle of Paid Advertising vs. SEO, over 70% of marketers see optimization as a better solution. Not only is it more cost-effective, but SEO also provides a long-term self-sufficient system for business once properly implemented and grown.

#16: Over 1.3 million businesses, website publishers, and nonprofits nationwide benefited from Google advertising

Although we just explained that modern PPC solutions have lost their dominance over SEO, they still matter. In fact, there are millions of businesses worldwide that still use them to promote their pages and sites online. Paid Advertising still maintains a fundamental role in establishing your brand online.

#17: 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority.

Given the overall impact of inbound marketing and SEO as a whole, most digital marketers today are devoted to it. In fact, according to a survey by HubSpot, more than 61% of marketers are focused on growing their organic traffic and presence through the implementation of SEO solutions for modern companies.

#18: “Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% in the past two years.

Not all businesses have the same amount of resources to invest in digital marketing efforts. On the other hand, not all businesses want to focus their advertising efforts on a global or nationwide scale. For smaller businesses, investing in local SEO is just as good, offering the chance to appear in local traffic in their service area. And according to Google reports, online search queries that include the phrases “near me” or “where to buy/find” have grown rapidly in the past couple of years.

#19: 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles.

To link on to the previous stat in regards to localized search queries, there have been great surveys in regards to just how beneficial local searches can be for small businesses. A majority of consumers (over 72%) that conduct local searches end up visiting a store within a five-mile radius.

#20: Updating old blog posts with new content and images can boost organic traffic by as much as 106%.

With such an enormous amount of content being published daily, marketers can’t hope to maintain top rankings for long unless they maintain it. Yes, continuous links towards a well-ranked post can help, but you can’t rely on just that. As trends change, so do the needs of your target audiences. So, you need to take all those old posts and update them accordingly. Offer:

• a more modern approach,
• new research & studies,
• re-optimize them for new keyword variations,
• add some new images and content.

Studies show that re-publishing an old post with new content can boost organic traffic to that page for as much as 106%.

#21: Images are returned for 22.6% of search queries on Google.

People are relying more and more on visual search results in terms of images. Therefore, as the influence of social media networks such as Pinterest and Instagram grows, so does the need to properly represent content. With the right social media management solutions by your side, you can tap into the potential of converting through images.

• 62% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers want visual search more than any other new technology.

#22:. 40.7% of all voice search answers in 2019 came from a featured snippet.

Ever since featured snippets were introduced back in 2014, their dominance in voice searches has been growing. And although the recent removal of re-duplication of featured snippets on organic searches, they are still worth chasing after in the opinion of most marketers. It might take you some time to get those featured snippets, but the hard work will definitely pay off long-term.

#23: “Best” + “right now” mobile queries have grown by over 125% in the last two years.

People always want to find the best product, service, company, answers, solutions, etc. We know that we have options today no matter what we search for and that some are always better than others. So, we tend to rely on search engines to categorize and classify what the best options are. Google studies have shown that search queries that include “the best” and “right now” have grown rapidly in the last two years. So, business owners might want to consider implementing this in their overall marketing strategy.

Summary of the 23 SEO statistics every business owner should be aware of