SEO Statistics (How Many Pages Get Organic Traffic?)
Welcome to our SEO statistics roundup, where you’ll discover the most up-to-date and relevant data on search engine optimization.
We touch on multiple sub-topics to ensure comprehensive coverage so professional and beginner marketers can learn about the trends, best practices, and more.
From Google and SEO conversions to voice, video and local SEO, you’ll find stats on everything and then some.
Join us as we explore the latest insights and key metrics that can help you unlock the power of SEO and optimize your digital presence for maximum impact – because that’s what YOU deserve.
By the way, SEO is far from dead; you just need to take a different approach and have a little more patience.
This post covers:
SEO Statistics (Our Top Picks)
- Less than 10% of pages get organic search traffic from Google
- Only around 6% of pages rank in the top 10 search results within a year
- 25% of top-ranking pages are without a meta description
- Google has 200+ ranking factors
- There are approx. 9 billion searches on Google per day
- 1 second faster site load can mean a 7% boost in conversions
- Videos in blog posts can increase rankings by 157%
- 46% of all Google searches are locally-related
- 90% of SEO professionals name machine learning and AI as the leading SEO shift
- Organic mobile CTR is approx. 50% lower than on desktop
Ranking Statistics
1. Less than 10% of pages get organic search traffic from Google
Let’s start with one of the most shocking SEO stats I came across – less than 10% of pages actually get organic traffic from Google.
Over 90% of pages out there receive 0 organic search traffic from Google.
| Page visits | Share of pages |
| 0 visits | 90.63% |
| 1-10 visits | 5.29% |
| 11-100 visits | 2.84% |
| 101-1,000 visits | 1.04% |
| 1,001+ visits | 0.21% |
Some of the reasons for no (or very low) traffic are:
- The page has no backlinks
- The page has no long-term traffic potential
- The page has (doesn’t match) no search intent
- The page is not indexed
Source: Ahrefs
2. Pages and posts that rank on the first page of Google have, on average, around 1.5K words
Have you ever wondered what’s the best word count for posts and pages to have a higher chance of scoring the first page on Google? I have.
Luckily, guys over at Backlinko analyzed nearly twelve million Google search results to discover that the average Google first-page-ranking result has 1,447 words.
They also found that longer articles tend to have more backlinks/referring domains than shorter ones.
Source: Backlinko
3. Only around 6% of pages rank in the top 10 search results within a year
Unfortunately, there are no quick results when it comes to search engine optimization. It usually takes months, heck, years, to see any tangible results.
Ahrefs found that only 5.7% of the “lucky” pages get ranked in the top ten search results within a year.
Moreover, 19.5% of pages ranked in the top 11-100 position in the same period, and 74.8% in 101+.
Note: The higher the DR, the more chances the page has to score the top search results we all strive for.
Source: Ahrefs
4. 7.4% of top-ranking pages are without a title tag
Even though 92.6% of the top-ranking pages do have a title tag, imagine how much could the ones that don’t improve their performance. And 7.4% isn’t a small number.
What’s also worth mentioning is that for the pages that have a title tag, Google rewrites it in 33.4% of cases. (Keep in mind that in most rewrites, the changes aren’t too drastic. Plus, they’re done to title tags that are too long.)
On top of that, when Google ignores the title tag, it will usually use the H1 tag instead.
Source: Ahrefs
5. 25% of top-ranking pages are without a meta description
Okay, we’ve covered title tags – what about meta descriptions? There are approximately 25% of the top-ranking websites that don’t have a meta description.
What happens with the other 75% of the pages? Google rewrites them in nearly 63% of the cases. Furthermore, the percentage increases (65%) for long-tail keywords and drops (59%) for fat-heads.
What’s more, Google truncates meta descriptions that are too long – and it is less likely to rewrite these.
Recap: Although Google is expected to adjust your meta descriptions, they’re still worth writing (because they might end up among the 37% shown ones).
Source: Ahrefs
6. Averagely, the top-ranking pages also rank for almost 1K other relevant keywords
Even if you give it all it takes to rank for a particular keyword, your posts and pages will likely rank for many other relevant keywords, too.
In the case of the pages that rank in the top ten search results, they also rank for close to one thousand other relevant keywords.
Source: Ahrefs
Google Search Statistics
7. Google has an 85.5% global desktop search engine market share
We all know that Google is absolutely dominating the global (desktop) search market share. In March 2023, Google had a staggering 85% market share, with the second biggest, Bing, being FAR behind at 8.2%.
Fun fact: Alphabet (the company that owns Google) employs 190,000+ full-time employees and has a $1.22 market cap.
But learn more about search engine facts and figures through these search engine statistics.
Source: Statista #1
8. Google has 200+ ranking factors
If you would like to crack the code of Google’s algorithm, you would need to look and study all of its 200+ ranking factors. Some of the different ranking factor categories are related to the domain, page level, backlinks, user interaction and brand signals, to name a few.
But really, you don’t have to follow all of them to see good results in Google.
Source: Backlinko
9. Google’s first result gets an average 27% click-through rate (CTR)
More than one-quarter of all the clicks on the first page of Google go through the first hit.
| First page position | CTR |
| #1 | 27.6% |
| #2 | 15.8% |
| #3 | 11.0% |
| #4 | 8.4% |
| #5 | 6.3% |
| #6 | 4.9% |
| #7 | 3.9% |
| #8 | 3.3% |
| #9 | 2.7% |
| #10 | 2.4% |
What about the second page and beyond? Only 0.63% of searchers clicked on something from the second page. All this tells us that ranking on the second page will barely generate any clicks and visits.
Source: Backlinko
10. CTR can increase by 32% if moving one position up
While moving up one position on pages two, three, etc., won’t do much, the change will be drastic if it happens on the first page in Google.
So, if your blog or website is in the second position and jumps to first, that could mean an increase in clicks by nearly 75%.
| Position change | CTR change |
| 2 -> 1 | +74.5% |
| 3 -> 2 | +43.4% |
| 4 -> 3 | +31.9% |
| 5 -> 4 | +32.6% |
| 6 -> 5 | +29.3% |
| 7 -> 6 | +23.5% |
| 8 -> 7 | +20.5% |
| 9 -> 8 | +23.6% |
| 10 -> 9 | +11.2% |
Source: Backlinko
11. 53% of consumers first do a Google search before making a purchasing decision
In the United States, 53% of consumers first do a Google search to research the product or service they’re interested in before making (or not) the purchase.
Additionally, 56% of global in-store shoppers say they use their smartphones to shop or research while in a store.
Because smartphone internet use is huge, you should also peek at our mobile marketing statistics.
Source: Think With Google #1
12. There are approx. 9 billion searches on Google per day
According to Worldometers’s live stats, there are around nine billion searches per day on Google – at the time of writing this, I see the number of searches at 8.6+ billion (but the evening is still young).
Source: Worldometers
SEO Conversion Statistics
13. The average SEO conversion rate across all industries is 2.4%
When looking at conversion rates from the SEO efforts, FirstPageSage found the average across all industries to be 2.4%.
| Business type | SEO conversion rate |
| Offline businesses | 2.9% |
| Services businesses | 2.7% |
| SaaS | 1.9% |
| eCommerce | 1.6% |
Source: FirstPageSage
14. Annual industry reports have the highest conversion rates
Have you ever wondered what type of content generates the highest SEO conversion rates? Surprisingly, it’s not a blog post. According to FirstPageSage’s findings, it’s annual industry report.
| Content/page type | SEO conversion rate |
| Annual industry report | 4.8% |
| White paper | 4.6% |
| Landing page | 2.4% |
| Blog article | 2.3% |
| Webinar | 1.3% |
You may also be interested in our must-know blogging statistics and find out how many blogs there are.
Source: FirstPageSage
15. 1 second faster site load can mean a 7% boost in conversions
Speed, performance and search engine optimization go hand in hand very well. In fact, if you want to improve your conversions, one way to do it is by improving your website or blog loading time. And by going down one second, the conversions could go up 7%.
Because UX matters (speed improves UX), don’t forget to check our extensive user experience statistics. But I’m sure you’ll also be interested in these site speed statistics to find how fast a site should load.
Source: WebFX
16. 50% of all “Near Me” searches end up with an offline store visit
If you run a brick-and-mortar or any other physical business location, local SEO matters. Half of the searches might bring people to your location if your business ends up in the “Near Me” results.
Intertwine online with offline to see better results.
Source: Safari Digital
17. 49% of marketers name SEO the highest ROI-generating channel
Nearly half of the marketers reported in a survey by Search Engine Journal that SEO is a marketing channel with the best ROI (yes, out of all the marketing channels).
Do you also want to find out how many businesses use digital marketing? Then check these in-depth digital marketing statistics.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Voice Search SEO Statistics
18. More than 40% of all voice search answers come from featured snippets
Brian Dean at Backlinko found that 40.7% of all voice search answers come from featured snippets after analyzing 10,000 results. Moreover, 70.4% of the voice search result pages have HTTPS.
Source: Backlinko
19. The average voice search result has 29 words
Google aims to create as quick voice search results as possible yet still helpful and relevant. The average word count of a voice search result is 29.
Sure, your answer snippets can be longer or shorter, but use 29 words as a reference point.
Source: Backlinko
20. The average reading level of a Google voice search result is 9th grade
Just like your articles shouldn’t be too complicated to read (unless it is something technical), so should voice results be easy to understand. Out of 10K results, the average reading level of voice search results was 9th grade.
Source: Backlinko
21. 75% of voice search results also rank in the top 3 for that query
The highest chance of scoring the voice search result on Google is if your content already ranks high. It was found that around 75% of voice search results also rank in the top three for their related queries.
Source: Backlinko
22. Almost 50% of consumers use voice for general searches
An Adobe survey found that 48% of consumers use voice search when performing general web searches.
Fun fact: 44% of users use voice technology daily, primarily on their smartphones. Less common technologies for voice are smart speakers, laptops, tablets and smart TVs, to name a few.
Source: Search Engine Land
23. Google voice search queries have increased by 3,400% since 2008
One of the most common reasons for using voice searching is to get faster results. The popularity of Google voice search has rapidly increased over the past years, increasing by a whopping 3,400% since 2008.
Source: HubSpot
Video SEO Statistics
24. Comments, view counts, shares and likes impact YouTube videos’ rankings
While these aren’t the only ranking factors for higher/first-page ranking YouTube (YT) videos, it was found (after analyzing 1.3 million YouTube videos) that the videos with more comments, views, shares and likes get better positions.
But the size of a YouTube channel doesn’t strongly impact rankings. In other words, any-size YT channel videos can see high rankings.
Also, there’s practically no connection between keyword-optimized video descriptions and rankings. (I often see YT videos with millions of views that lack description.)
Source: Backlinko
25. Just under 15 minutes is the average length of first-page YouTube videos
Even though YT shorts are doing extremely well, generating millions of views, the main section of the platform still gives more juice to longer videos. According to Backlinko, the average length of a first-page YouTube video is 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
Source: Backlinko
26. Nearly 70% of first-page YT videos are HD quality
This is good and bad news. The bad news is – if you aren’t recording videos in high-definition, they may not perform as well as you’d want. The good news is – it’s much easier to film in HD today than just a few years back (you can do it on your mobile device!).
Source: Backlinko
27. Videos in blog posts can increase rankings by 157%
If your text-only posts are performing well, you can improve them with image content. And if your image posts perform well, you can improve them with video content. Or you can jump right in and create the most epic blog posts with compelling visuals, including videos.
It was found that posts with videos have the opportunity to see a 157% increase in organic search traffic. Will you also be adding videos to posts now?
Source: Search Engine People
28. 80% of people switch between search and video when researching products
Reading reviews and testimonials is one part of the product exploring journey for 80% of people. The other part is watching videos about the product(s) they are trying to gain more information on.
Source: Think With Google #2
29. Blog posts with videos attract almost 3x more inbound links than plain text posts
We already learned that blog posts with videos rank MUCH higher than those without videos.
In addition to that, blog posts with videos will also attach almost three times as many inbound links as plain text posts.
However, the articles/posts that contain videos, images and lists are the highest (6x!) in attracting inbound links.
Source: MOZ
Local SEO Statistics
30. 46% of all Google searches are locally-related
Roughly said, nearly half of all searches on Google have something to do with seeking local information. Do you now see how important local SEO is?
Moreover, Milestone Research reports that 22.6% of all internet traffic comes from local search results.
Source: Social Media Today, Milestone
31. 30% of mobile searches are location-related
While the above stat aims at the whole spectrum, Think With Google shares with us that 30% of their mobile searches are related to location.
Source: Think With Google #3
32. 25% of small businesses miss H1 tags
One-quarter of small business websites are missing an H1 tag. Meaning, if you have a competitor that falls in that 25% and is outranking you, you might add and optimize your website for H1 tags and score their position.
Source: Fresh Chalk
33. Yelp appears in the top 5 search results for over 90% of Google web queries that include a city and business category
If you are trying to get more eyeballs on your business, create an optimized Yelp page because the platform appears in the top five search results for 92% of Google web queries with city and business categories.
Even if you have a Yelp page, you can still create an official business website (and potentially score two spots in Google).
The two other platforms worth mentioning that sometimes compete with Yelp are HomeAdvisor and Angi.
Source: Fresh Chalk
34. Businesses with more stars on Google My Business outrank those with fewer stars
If your business has four or more stars on Google My Business, it’s likely outranking those with less than four stars.
So yes, improving your star rating on Google My Business is an important element that can help you score better rankings.
Source: Fresh Chalk
35. 54% of consumers search for business hours on their smartphone devices
What are the most common local business information consumers search on their smartphone devices?
| Searching for | Share of mobile users |
| Business hours | 54% |
| Direction to local store | 53% |
| Local store address | 50% |
What about desktop and tablet users?
| Searching for | Share of mobile users |
| Product availability at local store | 45% |
| Business hours | 42% |
| Local store address | Product availability at a local store |
Source: Think With Google #4
SEO Industry Statistics
36. Google dominates the search engines space
We learned earlier that Google has the largest market share in the search engine industry space. But let’s dig deeper and find how far behind the other “largest” search engines are.
| Search engine | Market share |
| 85.5% | |
| Bing | 8.2% |
| Yahoo! | 2.4% |
| Yandex | 1.4% |
| DuckDuckGo | 0.7% |
| Baidu | 0.4% |
Source: Statista #1
37. 90% of SEO professionals name machine learning and AI as the leading SEO shift
Have you ever questioned what are the leading shifts (and potential threats) in search engine optimization around the world?
Machine learning, artificial intelligence and Google updates are ranked the highest on the list (see the table below for more).
| Shift | Share of respondents |
| Machine learning & AI | 18.7% |
| Google updates | 18% |
| 3rd-party cookie changes | 13.9% |
| Google zero click pages | 12.9% |
| Competition for talent | 11.5% |
| Site security | 10% |
| Google zero-click pages | 9.6% |
Source: Statista #2
38. “Google” is the most popular search query on Google
When you go on Google, why would you search for Google? Apparently, that’s what A LOT of searchers do. Hey, it was the most popular search query on Google in 2022, followed by YouTube, video and Facebook.
| Search query | Index value |
| 100 | |
| YouTube | 75 |
| Video | 68 |
| 62 | |
| Weather | 58 |
| Translate | 46 |
| 44 | |
| News | 38 |
| Amazon | 37 |
| 33 |
Source: Statista #3
39. The global SEO market is forecast to grow to $129+ billion by 2030
In 2020, the global search engine optimization market was valued at $68.1 billion but is expected to expand to $129.6 billion by 2030 (at an 8.4% CAGR).
As a reference, the US SEO market was estimated at $20.2 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $22 billion by 2030.
Source: Research And Markets
40. 37%+ SEO pros say their biggest SEO challenge is budget cuts
In a survey of 2,800+ SEO professionals, the most named budget cuts as their biggest SEO challenge. Second and third are strategy issues and lack of resources.
Only around 5% of respondents said they didn’t experience any challenges.
| SEO challenge | Share of respondents |
| Budget cuts | 37.6% |
| Strategy issues | 34.8% |
| Lack of resources | 32.9% |
| Pandemic-related issue | 27.9% |
| Management/stakeholder approval | 27.3% |
| Alignment with other departments | 26.9% |
| Scaling processes | 25.8% |
| Client relationship issues | 41.1% |
| Legal approval | 10.6% |
| Not experienced any challenges | 5.2% |
Source: Search Engine Journal
41. SEO professionals charge around $75-$100 per hour for their services
Moreover, less than 10% of SEOs charge more than $150 per hour.
But according to 78.2% of SEOs, the most common pricing model is charging a monthly retainer, which is, on average, between $501 and $1,000.
When it comes to pricing per-projects, the most popular pricing range is between $2,501 and $5,000.
Note that agencies and consultants charge way more for SEO services than freelancers. (But getting a super cheap freelancer can do more harm than good.)
Have you seen our freelance statistics? (Want to know how many freelancers are there?)
Source: Ahrefs
Mobile SEO Statistics
42. 58.3% of all global website traffic comes from mobile
Mobile web traffic first surpassed desktop in 2017 but had its ups and downs until Q3 of 2019 – that’s when it stayed ahead of the desktop ever since. At the time of writing these SEO statistics, mobile devices’ web traffic share is 58.33%.
Source: Statista #4
43. Over 70% of online users will access the web exclusively via their smartphones by 2025
With smartphones getting bigger, browsing the web and checking anything online is getting more comfortable.
According to CNBC, it’s predicted that 72.6% of online users will use the web exclusively via their smartphones by 2025 – that’s almost 3.7 billion people.
Source: CNBC
44. Organic mobile CTR is approx. 50% lower than on desktop
Even though mobile is getting bigger and bigger, desktop is still a lot better regarding organic CTR. Compared to desktop, mobile CTR is approximately 50% lower:
- Organic desktop CTR: 66%
- Organic mobile CTR: 39%
Surprisingly, the difference isn’t as big regarding paid CTR – 3.12% mobile vs. 3.82% desktop.
Source: SparkToro
45. Over 50% of smartphone users discovered a new company/product during searching on their smartphones
Having your website thoroughly optimized for SEO can help you score more “strangers.” Google reports that 51% of smartphone users discovered a new company or product while searching on their smartphones.
Source: Think With Google #4
46. 82% of smartphone users use search to find a local business
We’ve already talked about the “Near Me” searches and how many users end up visiting the physical store (or business). The “Near Me” searches are growing yearly, and more than 80% of smartphone users use search exclusively to find local businesses (example: pizzeria near me).
Source: Think With Google #4
Backlinks SEO Statistics
47. Over 66% of pages have zero backlinks
We learned earlier how little websites actually get traffic from Google. And one of the reasons so many don’t receive any traffic is the lack of backlinks.
According to Ahrefs, 66% of pages have no backlinks and around 26% have only three or fewer links from other websites. What’s even more shocking is that only 0.08% of websites have 101+ backlinks.
| Number of backlinks | Share of websites |
| 0 backlinks | 66.31% |
| 1-3 backlinks | 26.29% |
| 4-10 backlinks | 5.22% |
| 11-100 backlinks | 2.1% |
| 101+ backlinks | 0.08% |
Source: Ahrefs
48. The average cost of a backlink is $361
Joshua of Ahrefs did a research to find the average cost of a backlink or niche edit and a guest post.
The former’s price is, on average, $361. Remember, Joshua didn’t get a response from a whopping 78.6% of people when he did the reach out. Only 12.6% said they sell links and the rest don’t.
Source: Ahrefs
49. The average cost of a guest post is $77
When contacting website owners to sell him a guest post, Josua, again, didn’t get a response from 74.4%. And the average price of the 12.2% willing to sell him a guest post was $77.
Remember, the cost of links and guest posts varies significantly from industry to industry. Thus, the prices can be way lower or much higher. Plus, it depends on the quality and size of the website.
Source: Ahrefs
50. Position 1 in Google averagely has 3.8x more backlinks than positions 2-10
If you want to rank higher, you need to get more backlinks. Out of 11.8 million Google search results, Backlinko found that the number one positions, on average, have 3.8 times more backlinks than positions two to ten on the first page.
Source: Backlinko
51. Longer articles can get 77% more backlinks than short articles
Usually, a highly-quality article won’t be short; it will be long and full of valuable information. And because of this, more will talk about it and share; thus, it will end up receiving a lot more backlinks.
It’s said that longer articles, on average, receive 77.2% more links than short ones.
Surprisingly, really long articles (2K+ words) are not the best regarding social shares. Still, longer (but not too long) are more shareable than shorter.
Source: Backlinko
Keyword Statistics
52. Nearly 95% of keywords get only ten (or less) monthly searches
The major chunk of keywords (Ahrefs looked at the four billion keywords in their database) get barely any monthly searches. And only 0.0008% of keywords get 100,000+ monthly searches.
| Search volume | Share of keyword |
| 1-10 | 94.74% |
| 11-1,000 | 5.14% |
| 1,001-100,000 | 0.10% |
| 100,001+ | 0.0008% |
Source: Ahrefs
53. Half of the search queries are 4 words or more
It rarely happens that you go to Google and type in a one-word search query. It’s usually at least two, if not more.
According to WordStream, 50% of all searches are four-word queries or longer (because half of the people are searching for something more specific – and that’s why longtail keywords are also so effective).
Source: WordStream
54. Google’s Keyword Planner is accurate only around 45% of the time
Many website owners and SEOs use Google’s Keyword Planner when doing research. However, Ahrefs found that the tool is accurate only around 45% of the time, and 55% of the time, it overestimates search volumes. (The search volume is “drastically underestimated” only around 0.5% of the time.)
Source: Ahrefs
55. 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before
To be honest, I’ve never even thought about how many searches are there that have never been searched on Google. As it turns out, 15% (of all searches!). That’s not a small number, by the way.
Source: Google
56. 46% of clicks in Google Search Console go to hidden terms
Google Search Console might not be as trustworthy as you think. In fact, Ahrefs noticed that a staggering 6.08% of all clicks in their study when to hidden terms. (The study was conducted across over 146,000 websites and almost nine billion clicks.)
Source: Ahrefs
Conclusion
Our team joined forces to create an all-inclusive overview of the key metrics and insights that shape the world of search engine optimization.
We have explored the latest trends, practices, and challenges businesses and marketers face in optimizing their online presence.
By taking advantage of these statistics, you can better understand the importance of SEO and how it impacts your digital visibility and success. Plus, make informed decisions and implement effective strategies to stay ahead of the competition.
Don’t forget (!): SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous adaptation and optimization based on data-driven insights.
Stay tuned for more.
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