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Posted on Feb 1, 2022

2022 SEO Statistics: Industry Stats From Video to Local SEO

#seo #video #linkbuilding #statistics

SEO is constantly changing 100s of times in 100s of little ways. It’s considered one of the most challenging digital marketing disciplines because of its complexity and scope.

SEO is a highly technical discipline at its heart, but it incorporates the creative and social aspects of marketing as well. SEO professionals need to be good not just at optimizing websites, but also at content creation and relationship-building. It’s not enough to have a website that just runs fast and looks good, you also have to provide content that’s valuable to your audience, and have a backlink profile that demonstrates that other websites trust you.

To keep you up to date on what’s going on in SEO for 2022, we have gathered some of the most important SEO statistics available. Staying informed about SEO trends will help you make the best website you can, provide the best user experience possible, and keep the organic traffic coming in.

General SEO Stats and Facts

We’ll start with a top-level view on the value of SEO as a marketing strategy. These statistics are a solid foundation that you can use to build and develop an effective SEO strategy and execute it efficiently.

Google is the most popular search engine in the market. In 2021, 79 % of the total desktop search traffic came from Google. The next big search engine is Bing at 7.27%, Baidu accounts for 6.55%, Yahoo is at 5.06%, and the remaining 2.2% is spread from AOL and other small players
About 70% of small companies don’t have an SEO strategy in place. Businesses that are not investing in SEO are missing out on a chance to increase their online visibility and ranking on the first page
Quality content and off-page SEO are still considered the most significant aspects of SEO success. Several authoritative sources claim that the combination of these two factors is the effective way to rank content in search engines
50% of all organic search queries consist of four or more words. If your website does not include long-tail keywords, you’re missing out on vital web traffic that can affect your conversion rates
Around 61% of marketers believe that SEO is significant for online success. Ongoing SEO optimization is the most effective way to increase traffic and grow your business online
Google crawls 100 billion pages in a month
46% of businesses have reported allocating $10,000 or more of their marketing budget for link building. Companies using SEO best practices have better chances to get on search engine pages and run successful campaigns
Long-tail keywords have a higher click-through-rate (CTR), about 2.5x more than head terms (queries with one or two words)
Businesses that have online reviews are trusted more by customers. Around 88% of customers trust the businesses that have online reviews. Social reviews on platforms such as Google Business Profile, Facebook, and Yelp are effective trust and conversion boosters
URLs on page 2 of Google SERPs only get 6% of clicks. This means if you are not ranking on the first page of Google, you have less than a 1% chance of receiving organic clicks from users. This highlights the importance of getting your website on the first page of Google
In 2020, 50 billion web pages were indexed webpages in Google search
97% of customers research a company using the internet
About 35% of companies allocate more than $1000 per month to their link-building efforts. The top-ranking websites of search engines are constantly working to retain their positions by adding high authority and relevant links to their websites every month
Around 1.88 billion websites exist in the market today
65% of digital marketers claim that link building is the most challenging aspect of SEO. Link building is one of the most unpredictable and challenging aspect of SEO because it’s the one that web masters have the least control over
70% of clicks in Google search results go to organic results, with only 30% going to Google Ads listings. Even after Google’s best result, users are still able to distinguish between the paid and organic listing in the search results

Search Engine Statistics

SEO is a field that studies the way that search engines work, first and foremost. This means not just understanding what search engines think is important, but how they decide that.

The first result in Google’s Organic search has an average click-through-rate (CTR) of 31.7%. This CTR decreases as you go down the page, with the 2nd result having a CTR of 24.71%, the 3rd result having a CTR of 18.6%, and the 4th result having a CTR of 13.6%
Relevant search results influence 39% of purchase decisions. In other words, users are more likely to make a purchase from websites they see on their first page of organic results
Around 12.29% of search queries find featured snippets in their search results. Featured snippets are popular among users as they allow them to quickly obtain the information they’re searching for
About 3.5 billion searches take place on Google every day
Around 34.4% of searches on mobile and 61.5% of searches on desktop result in absolutely no clicks

Video SEO Statistics

Video SEO refers to optimizing videos to rank higher in search, increasing each video’s organic viewership, and maximizing its potential reach. It mostly refers to YouTube videos, but can also include other video platforms such as Vimeo and Dailymotion. With these helpful video SEO statistics, you can use your video marketing efforts to augment your SEO strategy.

The first page videos on YouTube have an average length of 14 minutes and 50 seconds
Posts that contain videos gain a 157% boost in organic traffic and backlinks. Multimedia content is best – a mixture of text and videos enhances your content and makes it more engaging for your users
Engagement metrics such as the number of comments, shares, likes and view count has a strong correlation with higher video rankings on YouTube
However, there was no link between YouTube rankings and a keyword-optimized video description
Videos that gain new subscribers tend to rank higher on YouTube.
68.2% of first-page YouTube results are HD videos.
YouTube is the second most viewed website on the internet

Local SEO Statistics

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Businesses with a strong local presence in a geographic region are more likely to earn consumer trust. For many industries like retail and service-based industries, people are more likely to gravitate towards a local business with a strong online reputation than a franchise without much visibility in their region.

Here are a few facts and figures that help demonstrate that.

You will find a Yelp page in the top 5 results for up to 92% of search queries containing a city location and a business category
76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby, visit the same business within a day
46% of all searches on Google are for a local service or a local business
28% of all local searches result in a purchase
25% of websites that belong to small businesses do not have an H1 tag
A survey found that 87% of customers read online reviews for businesses during a local search.
Around 93% of customers use the internet to find a business in their local area

Mobile SEO Statistics

Google rolled out mobile-first indexing March 2018 to account for the rise of web traffic on mobile devices. Mobile SEO, or the practice of optimizing websites for search on mobile devices, has become more important than ever as a result . To help you get started, we’ve gathered some insightful mobile SEO stats to help you effectively target mobile users.

58% of all Google searches happen on mobile devices
87% of smartphone owners conduct a search on mobile at least once a day
30% of all mobile searches are specific to a location
51% of smartphone users found a new company or product while searching on mobile.
Voice searches account for 20% of the queries on mobile
The organic click-through rate on mobile is approximately 50% less when compared to desktop.
The very first organic search result on mobile receives around 27.26% of clicks which is higher than 19.3% of clicks received on desktop
84% of all “near me” queries take place on mobile
Around 67% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from businesses that have a location-optimized mobile website
Paid clicks on mobile devices now account for almost 62% of Google’s paid ads

Link Building Statistics

When it comes to link building, quality is more important than quantity. You will get more value out of 5 good, strong, authoritative backlinks than 50 spammy backlinks with no traffic. The challenge of finding those strong, quality backlinks consistently and at scale is what makes link building one of the hardest SEO tactics to plan and execute.

With this in mind, here are a few link building statistics to help give you an edge in your next outreach campaign.

Content with at least 1,000 words or more gets more links and social media engagement than shorter-form content
70% of digital marketers use Ahrefs as a tool for link building
17% of SEO professionals say they only use free SEO tools
The average cost of a paid guest post is $77.80.
46% of marketers spend $10,000 or more on linkbuilding
A quality backlink costs an average of $800-$1,000 to acquire
Around 53% of marketers consider guest posting as an effective tool for link building.
More than 63% of marketers and businesses prefer to outsource their linking building routines to a third party
34% of marketers report that their website has a Moz domain authority of 40 or higher
66.31% of web pages have no backlinks
65% of marketers say that linkbuilding is the hardest SEO tactic to execute

Keyword Statistics

Keyword research is the backbone of SEO campaigns. This is where the actual campaign begins. Therefore, it is critical to understand keywords and their importance. These SEO statistics will educate you about the keyword trends, and help you understand how people search on Google.

70.87% of keywords that are searched more than 10,000 times monthly consist of only one or two words.
Around 8% of search queries are phrased as questions on search engines.
92.42% of keywords only have ten or fewer monthly searches.
13.5% of keywords that have ten or less searches per month consist of only one or two words
0.16% of the most popular keywords are behind 60.67% of all searches taking place on the internet.

Search Engine Trends

SEO is constantly evolving, and new trends emerge every day. To stay on top of your SEO game, you must be aware of the search engine trends and incorporate them into your SEO strategy. These Search engine SEO facts will give you the current state of a search engine, and help you optimize your campaigns to maximize the results.

75% of search engine users never go beyond the first page of Google results
Around 21% of people surfing the internet click on more than one search result
Organic traffic accounts for more than 40% of revenue across Media and Entertainment, Retail, Hospitality, Technology/internet
SEMrush reported that users visit 3 to 3.5 pages every time they land on a website from search engines.
Ahrefs conducted a study that found that around 90.63% of content gets no traffic from Google.
Domains ranking in the top 3 spots have an average bounce rate of 49%
Wordstream reported that brand affinity helped boost the CTRs by 2 to 3 times.
More than 86,000 searches happen on Google every second.
The 1st to 3rd ranking pages on SERPs generate a clickthrough rate of 36%.
Google made more than 3,620 improvements to search in 2018.
Around 18% of people searching the internet enter a new query before they click on any result for the original query.
99.58% of featured snippets rank in 1 to 10 positions on Google.
Organic methods drive around 300% more traffic to websites when compared to social media.
The major search engines, YouTube, Bing, Google and Yahoo account for a total of 70.6% of all website traffic.
Searchmetrics reported that the average time a user spends on a website in the top 10 SERP results is 3 minutes and 10 seconds.
Google reported that 1.1 billion smartphone users will be use voice search every week
OC&C reported that voice search has a 20% market share of all Google Searches in the US.

Voice Search Stats

Voice searches have started to replace traditional text-based searches. They have made it easier for people to search the internet and have reduced the need for typing every query. These voice search SEO stats will get you started on an effective SEO strategy.

Voice search contains an average of only 29 words
The average Google voice search result receives around 44 tweets and 1,199 Facebook shares
The average page that results in Google voice search contains around 212 words
ComScore predicted that search queries would take up half of the searches by 2020
Mobile voice searches are 3 times more likely to be for something local when compared to text searches
Voice searches load in 4.6 seconds, which is 52% faster when compared to the load time of the average page.
9th grade is the average reading level of a voice search result
Around 40.7% of all answers that are displayed in a voice search are pulled from a featured snippet.
Over 47 million people use Alexa and Google smart speakers in the US.
Websites that have a strong link authority are more likely to rank well in voice search.
HTTPS websites have 70.4% of voice search result pages.
While the global average of voice search is 31.3%, schema pages is 36.4% of voice search
75% of voice search results are pulled from any of the top 3 desktop ranking pages for any given query.

Content Marketing Stats

Content is king, in marketing, and it’s just as true in SEO as anywhere else. Your website is highly unlikely to rank for the keywords you want without high-quality content that’s well-written, well-researched, and provides value to your audience.

These statistics will help you understand the relationship between SEO and content marketing, and the thinking that goes into a content marketing strategy.

Simply updating the existing content with fresh images and written content has the potential to increase your organic traffic by 111.3%
About 57% of SEO experts agree that content creation and marketing are the best way to drive results
Around 65% of searchers unveil that relevance is the most important factor to curate a successful SEO campaign
60% of marketers are publishing content once a day. Despite knowing the power of content marketing, only 60% of marketers are posting content once or more every week
The average 1st-page result in Google contains around 1890 words of content. This means detailed articles and landing pages have the potential of establishing you as the industry leader
Content creation can also improve indexation rates by more than 434%. Websites that are regularly updated are loved by Google. The latest SEO stats show that creating regular blog content will result in 434% higher indexation rates when compared to the websites that do not update their content on a regular basis

Technical SEO Statistics

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website from a performance standpoint. You need a website to be techically well-optimized for the same reason you need an engine for your car to run.

Technical SEO gets highly complicated at the granular level, but even a basic understanding of what makes a website run well can help you make your website significantly better. It’s also useful for understanding what search users look for from a user experience and technical standpoint.

Mobile users are more likely to purchase from businesses that offer custom features for their location
The chances of bounce rates increase if the page load speed is increased from one to three seconds. It automatically goes up by around 90% if the load speed increases to five seconds
Your website conversion rates gradually fall by about 4.42% with each second of load time
The average attention span of a human is 8 seconds and dropping. Attention spans have decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2018. This means that you now have even less time to capture someone’s attention with your website or content
The first 5 seconds of page-load time have a massive effect on your conversion rates. These are times when people are making up their minds whether to stay on the site or not. If you take too long, they’ll leave without seeing your content
In the recent survey, about 48% of the website owners surveyed said they would be willing to drop animation and video for faster load times on their sites

SEO Is Fundamental For Success

SEO is a multi-faceted discipline that requires analytical skills as well as creative thinking to be successful. It begins with anticipating how your users expect to find you on Google, and accounting for that with content that accounts for that while providing them with a good user experience.

Your website is the face of your business on the internet, so it’s important to make sure that it represents who you are and what you’re capable of. Sign up for Prerender, and make your website the best it can possibly be.