Note: this post originally appeared on https://intergrowth.com/seo/stats/

Yes, we did just say mind-bottling.

While many believe that SEO is dead (enough that 210 people search for that exact phrase every month), the reality is that SEO is still very much alive, and we have the statistics to prove it.

Sure, Panda and Penguin have made it very difficult to cheat the system, but each of these algorithm updates has moved SEO from a manipulative marketing practice to an art form that combines branding, content creation, IT, and content promotion to drive highly-qualified visitors to your website.

Whether trying to understand if SEO is right for your business or trying to sell SEO to a potential client, these 27 SEO stats from 2019, 2020, and 2022 should be enough to convince anyone that SEO is essential to their business, while also providing some good benchmarks when building your company’s SEO strategy.

SEO Stats for 2022

1. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Click to Tweet this!

2. Google (+ Google Images) currently holds 91.94% of the total search engine market share, followed by bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and YANDEX. Click to Tweet this!

3. 61% of B2B marketers stated that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative. Click to Tweet this!

Related: Learn how to 2x your monthly leads overnight.

4. 63% of all shopping begins online, even if the purchase itself happens in a store. Click to Tweet this!

5. 70% of online marketers say that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales. Click to Tweet This!

6. The top page listed in a Google search has an average click-through rate of 32%. Click to Tweet this!

7. 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines. Click to Tweet this!

Photo credit to Huffington Post

Oh, you just did a search for the phrases that relate to your business and came up on the second page of Google search results? That’s a bummer. But getting highly-targeted visitors to your website is overrated, right?

That’s where we come in. Take 2 minutes to fill out this content marketing form and we’ll tell you exactly what you need to fix those search ranking issues.

Read this ecommerce SEO case study to see how we got one e-commerce company to rank 7th on Google for “camera backpacks”, just in time for Christmas.

Ok, enough shameless self-promotion. Back to the stats!

8. 66% of people perform some type of online research before making a purchase online. Click to Tweet this!

9. The average first-page result on Google consists of 1,447 words. Click to Tweet this!

Learn our step-by-step content development process to see how we consistently rank at the top of Google.

10. Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (ex. cold-calling, direct mail, etc.) have a 1.7% close rate. Click to Tweet this!

11. 86% of people ignore paid banner ads, choosing to only click on organic search results. Click to Tweet this!

12. Bounce rates increase by if 9% your website takes 2 seconds to load and 38% if your site takes 5 seconds to load. Click to Tweet this!

13. Conversion rates fall by 4.42% for every extra second that it takes your website to load. Click to Tweet this!

14. 39.4% of internet users in the U.S. conduct searches by voice. Click to Tweet this!

Local SEO Statistics for 2022

Outranking national brands in search results was once nearly impossible in the world of SEO. Fortunately, Google gave local businesses a way to compete with the big guys in 2014.

In July 2014, Google rolled out the first version of their Pigeon update, which gave local businesses the ability to compete for search rankings on a local level. In short, Google began to give a ranking boost to businesses in close proximity to the searcher in location-specific searches (ex. “pizza near me”, “Denver contractors”, etc.).

Pigeon invited local businesses to the world of search engines, and those who were paying attention made out like bandits.

15. Nearly one-third of consumers in the U.S. use the internet to search for local businesses every day. Click to Tweet this!

16. 76% of people who search for a local business on their mobile phone visit a related business 24 hours. Click to Tweet this!

17. 28% of local searches result in a purchase within 24 hours. Click to Tweet this!

18. 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-friendly site. Click to Tweet this!

19. 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. Click to Tweet this!

20. 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps. Click to Tweet this!

Mobile SEO Statistics for 2022

If you thought that mobile-friendly sites were “unnecessary”, I think it’s safe to say that Mobilegeddon proved you wrong.

On April 21, 2015, Google rolled out an algorithm update that hurt the search rankings of non-mobile-friendly sites in mobile search results. In other words, if your website ranked first in Google for “Denver pizza shop” when searching from your mobile device, but was a pain in the ass to navigate through on your phone, then it wasn’t going to stay there for long.

Mobile search rankings are more important than ever, and will only grow increasingly important over time.

21. 55% of all worldwide internet traffic comes from mobile devices. Click to Tweet this!

22. 56% of all online consumers in the United States have searched for local businesses on a mobile device. Click to Tweet this!

23. More than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while using a search engine on their phone. Click to Tweet this!

24. 51% of internet users access the internet using only their smartphone (no desktop or laptop computer usage). Click to Tweet this!

25. The average American spends between 5 and 6 hours on their phones every day, not including work-related phone use. Click to Tweet this!

26. 53% of mobile website visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Click to Tweet this!

27. Searches including the terms “Where to buy” and “near me” have increased by 200% since 2017. Click to Tweet this!

To sum it all up:

• Search engine optimization is essential to your business’ success.
• In most cases, writing long-form content is better than writing 500-word blog articles.
• If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it’s probably time for a new website.
• Every local business needs to have a website that is optimized for local search results.

So was “mind-bottling” a fair word to use? For those of you looking to get started with SEO, come explore our content marketing services to see exactly what we would do for you today.

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