60+ Useful SEO Statistics for 2023

Winning in SEO can be tough. 

With frequent Google algorithm updates, unique market conditions, and fierce competition, it’s not unheard of to go with your gut when deciding on your next SEO strategy.

To help you create effective SEO campaigns that fit today’s market, look at the following up-to-date SEO data and approaches, plus the growing market trends for 2023. 

Key SEO Statistics

1. Almost 70% of all clicks go to the first five organic results. (Marketing Land)
2. The ROI for SEO spend can be as high as 748%. (First Page Sage)
3. 46% of product searches begin on Google. (Jumpshot)
4. More than 60% of searchers will disregard a business if they can’t find it online. (Safari Digital)
5. 61% of B2B marketers agree that SEO and organic traffic bring more leads than other marketing approaches. (Hubspot)

Keyword and SEO Strategy Statistics

Keywords are probably the first thing that comes to mind when talking about SEO. This isn’t shocking, as keywords hold the key to massive organic traffic (among other things). But do the various types of keywords perform equally well? See what the numbers say.

1. Around 14.6% of search queries are phrased as questions containing words such as who, what, where, why, and how. (Saga Pixel)
2. 12.29% of all search terms bring up featured snippets. (Startup Bonsai)
3. Pages that are on the first page of Google SERPs typically have about 66 characters on their URLs. (On The Map)
4. Most users search on Google using 3 words. (Search Engine Journal)
5. When hunting for specific products or services, online shoppers usually add “near me” and “where to buy” to their queries. (My Codeless Website)
6. Title tags with 15-40 characters (short tags) have a higher click-through rate (CTR) of 8.6% than those with longer tags. (On The Map)
7. Title tags that contain a question word receive 14.1% more clicks (CTR) than those that don’t. (On The Map)
8. Title tags with emotional words have a 7% higher CTR than those without. (On The Map)
9. 91.8% of searches on Google are long-tail keywords. (Finances Online)
10. In a highly competitive keyword search, long-tail keywords outrank the short-tail keyword CTR by 3 to 6%. (Smart Insights)
11. Long-tail keywords have around 2.5x more CTR than short-tail keywords. (Profitworks)

SEO and Content Marketing Statistics 

Which marketing approach should your business focus on: organic SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), or both? Let the data tell you the advantages of SEO, including its return on investment (ROI) rate.

1. More than 50% of all website traffic originates from online searches. (Bright Edge)
2. SEO campaigns can recoup the investment as early as six months, with peak results in the second and third years of the campaign. (First Page Sage)
3. B2B SaaS businesses can enjoy their SEO investment in 7 months and ecommerce in 16 months. (First Page Sage)
4. 70% of marketers believe SEO generates better results than PPC campaigns. (Databox)
5. 86.5% of SEO experts use PPC data to set up SEO campaigns. (Startup Bonsai)

SEO Agency Statistics

Many businesses are willing to spend a hefty budget to boost their SEO rankings. But how much is the market price for SEO services today? Get the latest insights below.

1. 25% of companies have a $10,000 – $25,000 budget for in-house SEO. Interestingly, the other 57% (aggregate) only allocate less than $10,000. (Aira)
2. Most SEO agencies charge $100-$149 per hour, and the higher-end SEO agencies charge $150-$199 per hour. This contributes to an average $3,594 monthly fee for hiring an SEO agency. (Expert Market)
3. An SEO expert with 2+ years of experience usually asks 40% more per hour than one with less experience. And for a one-off project, they typically ask 275% more. (Payscale)
4. When hiring an SEO agency, expect to spend $500-$30,000 for SEO audit and report, $220-$480 for competitor keyword analysis, and $700-$2,000 for local SEO optimization. (Expert Market)
5. SEO professionals managing the global market usually cost 130% more than those managing the local market. (Comrade Web)

Ranking Statistics

Every brand wants to land in the first position of the SERPs. But does ranking in #1 and #2 really make a big difference?  

1. A typical CTR earns by the #1 result is 39.8%, 18.7% for the #2 result, and 10.2% for the #3 results. This means the top 3 organic results receive over 68% of clicks. (First Page Sage)
2. Moving up one position in Google search results can increase your CTR by 2.8% on average. (Backlinko)
3. 2+ years is the average time needed for a page to rank on the first page of a Google search. To rank in position 1, most pages need 3 years. (On The Map)
4. Websites listed on page 2 of Google SERPs only get 6% of clicks. (Forbes)

Link Building Statistics

Link building is one of the most time-consuming tasks in SEO—but the benefits you’ll get will pay off. See how advanced your link-building game is in comparison to others.

1. 64% of in-house marketers agree that they don’t hire an external team to help them with link building (2022). This is an 8% increase from the year 2021. (Aira)
2. That said, more than half of the study respondents say they spend 10-50% of their budget on link building. (Aira)
3. The average cost of buying a backlink in 2020 is $500. The price was around $391 in 2019 and around $360 in 2018. (Prestige Links)
4. 84% of freelancers and link-building agencies do not use a performance-based model (bonus system) for their pricing. (Aira)
5. 32% of link builders can secure a link within 1-2 hours, whereas 24% need 3-5 hours per link. (Aira)
6. Websites in position 1 typically have 3.8x more backlinks than those ranked in positions 2 to 10. (Finances Online)
7. Long-form content generally has more backlinks than short-form content. Content with up to 1,000 words has around 2.4 backlinks on average, while content with 3,000-10,000 words has more than 4 backlinks. (On The Map)
8. The average cost of publishing a guest post is $77.80. (Search Engine Journal)

Search Engine Statistics

Nowadays, it’s very common to use “Google” to refer to the action of “searching the internet,” as in “I’m Googling the nearest restaurant.” See how busy Google is processing all the search queries in a day. 

1. Google is visited 88.6 billion times per month. (SimilarWeb)
2. Google conducts 90,460 searches per second, tallying up to more than 8.5 billion searches daily. (Internet Live Stats)
3. A Google user views an average of 8.83 pages per visit. (SimilarWeb)
4. 87% of people used Google to research local businesses (2022)—an increase of 6% from 2021. (Bright Local)
5. The average visit duration of Google users in the USA is 11:58 minutes. (PC Mag)
6. In April 2023, Google contributed more than 92% of the search engine market share. Followed by Bing at 2.79%. (GS Statcounter)

Local SEO Statistics

If you plan to improve your local SEO performance, you may want to focus on upgrading the quality of mobile searches. The numbers below will guide you more.

1. 76% of mobile users search for something nearby by adding “visit a business within a day” to their search query. 28% of these searches result in a purchase. (Think with Google)
2. 82% of smartphone users use the “near me” keyword in their queries to find a local business. (Google)
3. 46% of all Google searches are for local businesses or services. (SEO Round Table)
4. 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day. (Search Engine Land)
5. 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases. (Search Engine Land)

Video SEO Statistics

Watching a product demo is much more engaging than reading the explanation texts. No wonder content containing videos earn high SEO scores, as explained below.

1. YouTube is the second most viewed website on the internet. (Hootsuite)
2. Pages that contain videos gain a 157% boost in organic traffic and backlinks. (Bright Cove)
3. Embedding videos to blogs can increase overall conversion by 2x. (Bright Cove)
4. Users spend 2 minutes longer on pages that have videos. (Comsocre)
5. Videos are 50x more likely to be organically ranked than text-based results. (Forrester)
6. Video search results generate a 41% higher CTR than text-based content. (AimClear)

Mobile SEO Statistics

Mobile search is a power to be reckoned with. In some cases, it even surpasses the desktop search performance.

1. Mobile searches contribute to 63% of Google’s US organic search traffic and more than 50% of Google’s global traffic. (Merkleinc and Think with Google)
2. 51% of mobile users find a new product or company when searching with their smartphone. (Google)
3. 30% of all mobile searches are related to location. (Think with Google)
4. Websites that rank #1 on SERPs have a CTR of 27.7% for mobile—a higher CTR than desktop search at 19.3%. (SEO Clarity)
5. Search results on mobile receive 85.8% more impressions than the results on desktop. (SEO Clarity)
6. On average, Google shows 8.5 organic search results on page 1 for mobile search and 8.7 for desktop search. (Search Metrics)
7. 73% of internet users are projected to access the internet only via mobile devices by 2025. (CNBC)

Conclusions

The landscape of SEO may constantly change, but one thing remains constant: data. Leverage the insights you gain from these 2023 SEO statistics and trends for your next SEO campaigns. In turn, you’ll get higher rankings and more visitors to your website. 

That said, to analyze the success of your SEO campaigns, you need to monitor their growth over time. Get a report of your website’s performance straight into your inbox with Keyword.com. Our accurate Rank Tracker feature enables you to track your and your competitors’ keyword performance daily and see the SERP history of your target keywords from one day to months ago.

Your journey to SEO growth starts today.