101 SEO Stats Every Company Needs to Know

Are you looking to build your business online?

If you want to get new customers and earn revenue, you need to use SEO.

But that’s not a bad thing — in fact, it’s one of the best parts of doing business online.

But don’t take our word for it. Just check out the 101 stats that prove SEO is essential!

Last updated 2023

General Stats on SEO

1. Google’s rich search results have decreased the average number of organic results from 10 to 8.5 (Source)

2. Conversion rates are 10x higher from search than social on desktops (Source)

3. On average, the top 10 search results have 1,285 words (Source)

4. Content gets more links and shares when it has more than 1,000 words (Source)

5. 91% of Internet users (3.2 billion people) use search engines (Source)

6. 90% of consumers say “they’ll find you” when they’re ready to buy (Source)

7. 85% of retailers say SEO and paid search are the best ways to get new customers (Source)

8. 82% of marketers say SEO is effective (Source)

9. As many as 80% of consumers ignore paid ads in search engines (Source)

10. 71% of marketers say SEO is improving significantly or modestly (Source)

11. 71% of marketers target broad keywords in SEO to get customers at the top of the sales funnel (Source)

12. 70% of clicked search results are organic (Source)

13. Inbound leads cost 61% to acquire than outbound leads (Source)

14. B2B customers are 57% of the way through the buying process before they make a purchase (Source)

15. 42% of marketers say SEO is becoming significantly more effective (Source)

16. 40% of marketers say algorithm changes are the biggest challenges to SEO (Source)

17. 38% of marketers say budget constraints are the biggest challenges to SEO (Source)

18. 33% of small- and medium-sized businesses have optimized sites (Source)

19. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate (traditional leads have a 1.7% close rate) (Source)

Stats on Local SEO

20. A business’s address is the #1 most important piece of information to searchers (Source)

21. The number of searches with the words “near me” doubled on Google from 2014-2016 (Source)

22. 97% of people use the Internet to research local products and services (Source)

23. 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once per day (Source)

24. 86% of local searchers look up a business in Google Maps (Source)

25. 80% of local searches convert (Source)

26. 78% of local mobile searches yield offline purchases (Source)

27. 72% of people who search locally visit stores within five miles of them (Source)

28. 50% of local searchers visit a store within a day of performing their search (Source)

29. 33% of smartphone searches were made “right before” a store visit (Source)

30. 18% of local mobile searches generate a sale within 24 hours (Source)

Stats on Content Marketing

31. An infographic is 30x more likely to be read than text (Source)

32. The average #1 search result in Google has 1890 words (Source)

33. Businesses that use content marketing get 6x more conversions than businesses that don’t (Source)

34. Content marketing gets 3x more leads than traditional marketing (Source)

35. Shoppers who view video are 1.81x more likely to buy (Source)

36. Content marketing can earn as much as 2000% more blog traffic and 40% more revenue (Source)

37. Infographic demand grew 800% in one year (Source)

38. Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages on search engines (Source)

39. Updating old blog posts can increase traffic by 111% or more (Source)

40. 96% of marketers use content marketing to provide educational information (Source)

41. Visual aids increase pageviews by as much as 94% (Source)

42. 90% of consumers find custom content useful (Source)

43. Videos can improve conversions by as much as 86% (Source)

44. 86% of B2B marketers use content marketing (Source)

45. Videos improve conversion rates up to 86% (Source)

46. By 2019, 85% of all Internet traffic is expected to be video-related (Source)

47. 81% of companies say their blogs are important to business (Source)

48. 77% of B2C marketers use content marketing (Source)

49. 73% of organizations hire someone to handle content marketing specifically (Source)

50. 72% of marketers said content creation was the most effective SEO strategy (Source)

51. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing (Source)

52. 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content every day (Source)

53. 60% of marketers reuse content 2-5 times (Source)

54. Adding a video to your homepage increases its chance to rank on page 1 by 53% (Source)

55. 51.9% of marketers say video produces the best ROI of all content (Source)

56. 32% of marketers document their content strategy (Source)

57. Websites that use infographics grow 12% faster than those that don’t (Source)

58. Infographic usage grew from 9% to 52% (Source)

Stats on Technical SEO

59. 94.4% of websites use JavaScript (Source)

60. 93.3% of websites use External CSS (Source)

61. 87.5% of websites use Inline CSS (Source)

62. 83% of websites have integrated HTML5 (Source)

63. 58.9% of websites use Embedded CSS (Source)

64. 43% of .gov domains use robots.txt files (Source)

65. Schema markup is present in 36% of all Google search results (Source)

66. 24% of all .com domains use robots.txt files (Source)

67. 22% of all websites use robots.txt files (Source)

68. 7% of websites still use Flash (Source)

69. 2.7% of websites use Java (Source)

70. 0.3% of websites use Schema markup (Source)

Stats on Mobile SEO

71. By 2018, 73 billion phone calls to businesses will come from mobile search (Source)

72. Mobile compatibility became a Google ranking factor in April 2015 (Source)

73. Mobile search quantity surpassed desktop searches in 2016 (Source)

74. On smartphones, conversion rates are 15x higher from search than social media (Source)

75. On average, users spend three hours on mobile devices every day (Source)

76. From 2012 to 2015, mobile video use has grown 844% (Source)

77. 95% of the world’s population lives within a mobile network signal (Source)

78. 75% of US Internet traffic is expected to be mobile in 2017 (Source)

79. 62% of B2B marketers have optimized their blogs for mobile (Source)

80. 51% of B2C marketers have optimized their blogs for mobile (Source)

81. 50% of all mobile searches are for local results (Source)

82. Phone calls from mobile search grow by 42% each year (Source)

83. 37% of people say they’re more likely to buy on mobile responsive sites (Source)

Stats on Search Engines

84. Search engines drive more traffic to websites than any other marketing medium (Source)

85. Google processes 1.2 trillion searches per year, or 3.5 billion per day (Source)

86. Google controls 80% of the worldwide search engine market share (Source)

87. Google updates its algorithm as much as 890 times per year (Source)

88. Google uses 200+ ranking factors in its algorithm (Source)

89. To get an answer to a query, a single search has to travel an average of 3000 miles to a data center and back (Source)

90. One Google query may ping as many as 1000 computers in 0.2 seconds (Source)

91. Between 18-35% of clicks go to the #1 listing in search results (Source)

92. Google controls 65% of the search market share; Bing controls 33% (Source)

93. 20% of Google searches are asked by voice (Source)

94. Branded results earn up to 15% more clicks than non-branded terms (Source)

Stats on Search Engine Users

95. 200 million people use ad blockers (Source)

96. 96% of people think the ad industry acts without considering integrity (Source)

97. 92% of US adults use search engines (Source)

98. 54% of Americans use search engines for business information instead of a phone book (Source)

99. 50% of mobile users prefer to use web browsers over apps (Source)

100. 50% of all search queries are at least 4 words (Source)

101. On average, readers spend 37 seconds on an article pages (Source)

Make These Stats Work for You

Do you want to make SEO work for your business?

Check out our list of the best SEO companies in the world to find your future marketing partner!