Some say figures lie and liars figure. Sometimes the figures tell the story. Here’s what a deep dive into the analytical world of SEO statistics revealed to me:

1. The top traffic source – for all websites – is Organic search. 
2. 93% of all experiences on the internet begin with an organic search. 
3. Google’s number one organic entry for a given search term gets 32% of clicks, and an average CTR of 27.6%. 
4. Less than 1% of all searchers will get to page two.
5. The page one, spot one result is 10 times more likely to get a click than the spot ten result. 
6. Spots 1 to 3 get over 54% of all clicks.
7. Don’t try to buy your way to the top. As many as 94% of searchers will completely ignore the PPC ads at the top of the SERPs.  
8. Paid search ads have an abysmally low CTR among mobile shoppers, at only .79%. 
9. Organic CTR at positions 8-10 is effectively the same, so unless you move from spot ten to spot seven, it’s not worth the effort. 
10. The use of “positive” terms in titles (like “best,” “top,” and “most interesting”) increases CTR, on average, by over 4%.
11. Over 73% of all clicks on the web go to organic results. 
12. Over 90% of enterprise companies place an emphasis on organic search marketing. 
13. More than 54% of all clicks go to results in the top 3 positions. 
14. Getting a rich snippet will vastly improve a web page’s CTR. Most rich snippet results have an average CTR of almost 43%.
15. Google recognizes more than 200 ranking factors. This makes it more complicated than you might think to optimize a website.
16. Not convinced that content matters? The average number one spot in the Google search results contains 1,447 words. 
17. Content definitely matters. More than half of all B2B businesses feel that their website content is “generic and unresponsive.” I wonder if such copy helps their SEO at all?
18. For B2B businesses, more than half of their revenue (on average) comes from organic search.
19. On average, long-form content contains more than 77% more links than short-form copy. (Long-form copy is more likely to earn a backlink than short copy.)
20. Work smarter, not harder. Updating a single old post on your website has the potential to increase traffic by as much as 146%.
21. Don’t get spammy. Content counts, but only the good stuff. As much as 83% of marketers believe it’s more effective to create high-quality, high-value content less frequently than spam more often. Put me in that camp. 
22. Backlinks count. In fact, the average page one spot one result has almost 4 times more backlinks than the following 9 results. 
23. Not only do backlinks count, but they can be a prime differentiating factor. About 95% of all pages on the web have no backlinks.
24. According to SEMRush, over 92% of the top 100 ranking domains had at least one backlink.
25. More than half of all consumers will initiate an organic search to research a product before buying.
26. Patience pays. The average page one spot one result is 3 years old – or even older. 
27. It is rare for a page to rank well within one year. Only 22% of pages published will make it to page one within a year.
28. Do you think organic search is dead? Someone says it every year. Yet, the number of organic searches in 2020 increased by 27.5% from 2016 (2.55 trillion in 2020 compared to 2 trillion in 2016). People are utilizing organic search marketing strategies more than ever. 
29. Overall the use of search engines by consumers is increasing by an average of 20% per year. 
30. Local SEO is surprisingly impactful. Apparently, nearly 50% of all organic searches are for a local service or business. 
31. More than 75% of people who search for a local business end up visiting it within one day. 
32. At least 87% of people have researched local businesses through Google. 
33. Nearly a third of all mobile searches are location-based.
34. And, 28% of those searches result in a purchase. 
35. High time-on-page does improve organic performance. One study suggests that as little as 3 seconds extra time-on-page can improve an organic ranking position by one spot.
36. Mobile device searches constitute the highest portion of all web searches, at 41%. (Desktop is not far behind, at 38%.)
37. SEO converts. Organic leads have an average close rate of nearly 15%.
38. Social media is great, but organic search is still king. As of 2019, organic search still drove 10 times more traffic than social media. That was a few years ago and things are changing, but not at a magnitude that will eclipse organic search marketing anytime soon. 
39. Even among mobile shoppers, only Facebook and YouTube apps are more used than the Google app, which has almost 69% reach. 
40. Title tags and H1s are important. If Google cannot use the title tag, it will use the H1 more than half of the time. Your website’s pages should have optimized both title tags and H1s. 
41. URL SEO is real. Apparently, URLs that contain a keyword, or terms similar to it, get 45% higher click-through rates than those that don’t.
42. Don’t write your own meta descriptions? Google will do it, and nearly ¾ of all pages don’t even have one. That’s a missed opportunity for differentiation. 
43. The internet is a vast place. Over 90% of all pages on the web get virtually no traffic, or none at all. It’s very easy to get lost in the ladders of the SERPs – especially on the bottom rungs, if your pages get indexed at all.
44. When it comes to keyword research, don’t guess. Almost 95% of all keywords have basically no search volume
45. Answering questions your customers have asked you is a good strategy. At least 8% of all organic searches are formatted as a question.
46. As many as 18% of searchers are not happy with the results of their first search, and search for something else before clicking. 
47. Even if load speeds weren’t a ranking factor, they directly impact user behavior. As your page load speed increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of that session becoming a bounce increases 32%
48. Security is important, too. Of the best-performing rich snippet listings, 98% had a secure HTTPS URL.
49. At least 46% of marketers say that SEO positively impacts content marketing. (I am part of that statistic.)
50. Finally, the overwhelming majority of those who invest in SEO see favorable results – so much so that 88% of those who invested in it in 2022 said they planned to invest as much or more in 2023. 

Key Takeaways from These SEO Statistics 

There are more takeaways from this delving into SEO statistics than I could summarize here neatly. 

But the one major one is that SEO pays well, when you have executed properly. 

Almost regardless of your vertical, concerted SEO marketing is worth the effort, and for your vertical, organic marketing may be the only option from the start. 

Yesterday was the best time to start, but today is a good second.

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