Business owners often rely on search traffic to their websites to make sales and generate revenue. Making their website as user-friendly and SEO-friendly as possible has become an increasingly important aspect of their online venture’s success. If you are not an expert in search engines and digital marketing, it can be very difficult to keep up with the SEO industry, especially when Google improves its algorithm daily.
But fear not, we have put together this list of 10 statistics about SEO that might give you some guidance on some of your digital marketing decisions in 2019.
1. The SEO industry is valued at over $70 million (A$ 98.63 million)
More and more businesses acknowledge the importance of SEO in their marketing mix and have allocated more budget to optimise their website better for their customers. There has been a consistent growth since 2016, with the industry growing to A$91.59 million in that year. By the end of 2018, the niche was estimated at A$101.4 million.
Source: SEO Tribunal
2. 73,000 Google searches are being performed in one second – globally!
This statistic was true the second I wrote it down. If you want to check this out for yourself, head to this awesome website that tracks Google band and returns the number of global Google searches performed in a second.
Source: Internet Live Stats – Google band
3. Over 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone.
According to Google most customers aren’t brand-committed. About 90% of mobile users don’t have a specific brand in mind when they are turning to their mobile phones to buy something. To me, this is the living proof of the effectiveness of targeted mobile advertising.
Source: Google 2018 via Hubspot
4. Local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day
This is a very interesting stat. According to Google, these users are turning to Google to search for business hours, directions to a local store, product availability, or even the store’s physical address. Hence the importance for local businesses to look after their Google My Business listings and invest in Local SEO to make sure they capture the available local search demand.
Source: Google 2018 via Hubspot
5. 50% of search queries are four words or longer.
According to the latest study conducted by Hubspot, more than half of search queries performed in Google are made up of at least 4 words, which sometimes can look like a full sentence. This insight combined with the growing importance of Voice search is a reminder for us all to better integrate long-tail and voice search data in our SEO strategies.
Source: Hubspot
6. The number of voice queries increased by 3,400% between 2008 & 2017
Isn’t it crazy? Furthermore, according to a study conducted in 2018 by iProspect Australia, 57% of Australians use voice search. The piece of research found that Australians’ use of voice search is mainly related to utility, for example: ”how to build a garden bed from scratch?”. From a brand’s standpoint, this means that valuable content that brings convenience, knowledge and comfort to their users’ daily lives will likely make an impact.
Source: DigitalGYD
7. About 90.88% of all web pages receive zero visits
According to a study conducted in 2018 by Ahrefs, approximately 90.88% of all pages in their Content Explorer index literally get zero traffic from Google. There are many reasons why an indexed page might never get visits from search results: it could be that the page has very low content and therefore stands no chance to rank for any search terms. It could be that the page doesn’t have any backlink (internal and external). Another possibility is that this page doesn’t target a topic with enough search traffic potential. In all these possible scenarios, content and SEO audits are your best friends!
Source: Ahrefs
8. Google local packs shows up for 39% of queries in 2019
This meant that more than 1 in 3 search queries contains a local intent. This percentage obviously varies depending on industry, country and many other factors but you can check out this brilliant chart of Google’s SERP features which is updated daily.
Source: MozCast
9. About 72% of marketers are producing significantly more content than they did a year ago
This stat came out of a survey conducted by CMI. While it’s great to see more and more marketers producing content for users, remember that it will only benefit your brand or website if your piece of content is useful to your audience and is more helpful and of higher quality than those of your organic competitors.
Source: CMI
10. The first result on Google receives an average of 35.4% of the traffic
Then the second position receives an average of 17.55% of organic traffic and the third position received an average of 10.84%. This data regularly brought to us by the mobs at Advanced Web Ranking reveals the importance of 1st, 2nd or 3rd position in Google.
Source: AdvancedWebRanking
