SEO Statistics for 2023

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Nowadays, content marketing is undoubtedly one of the most successful ways of gaining brand visibility. Its effectiveness is a tactic that modern companies should not lose sight of when developing current and future expansion plans.

Equally, in such a competitive business environment – to ensure that content marketing efforts pay off – writers need to boost the standard of their texts through qualitative SEO methods.

With constant search algorithm updates, content marketers must adapt to the latest SEO trends when writing to generate fruitful results.

This article is packed full of the latest SEO statistics to help you discover the best SEO practices for 2023.

Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

1. Mobile SEO statistics

With the mobile market’s rapid expansion, everything you could ever wish for is only ever a few clicks away at any given moment.

Consequently, when establishing an action plan – for successful results – businesses investing in SEO ought to keep up with buyers’ continuously evolving navigation patterns and processes.

Given that data is marketers’ most powerful ally, below you’ll find some intriguing stats highlighting the importance of SEO mobile optimization.

Mobile devices account for 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide. (Statista)
Position #1 on mobile typically yields 27.7% of clicks, compared to position #1 on desktop, which typically gets 19.3% of clicks. (SeoClarity)
While searching on mobile devices, 96% of consumers use Google.
Mobile searches account for 52% of PPC clicks.
67% of mobile users prefer businesses with apps or mobile-friendly websites.
51% of consumers show greater trust in mobile-optimized websites.
52% of people are less likely to engage with a company that offers a poor mobile navigation experience.
51% of mobile users have found a new company or product through organic search.

Source: Neil Patel

2. Local SEO statistics

Over recent years, local SEO has significantly increased in importance, proving itself as a helpful resource and tactic. Especially for small and local businesses as a means to gain greater visibility for their brands.

With an expanded positive impact on businesses deploying it, as emphasized by the SEO statistics presented below, local SEO seems to directly and substantially influence sales.

Here’s what the data has revealed:

The conversion rate of local searches is 80% on average.
68% of people admit that they prefer searching online for local businesses before visiting them.
28% of local searches result in a purchase.
46% of Google searches have a local search intent.
19.9% of local businesses need help with on-site optimization.
There are around 36,000 local searches conducted every second.
50% of mobile users visit a store after conducting a local search.
54% of consumers search for business hours among local information.
A business on the first page of local search results is likely to be picked by around 92% of consumers.
35% of marketers agree that local SEO is important to businesses.
70% of consumers are inclined to visit a store because of information found online.
The first result of local business searches receives 24.4% of all clicks.
In 2022, mobile “near me” searches rose by 136%.
In over 50% of cases, the “near me” searches result in an offline store visit.
Location-related queries comprise 30% of all mobile Google searches.
78% of local searches on mobile result in an offline purchase.
Roughly 97% of people who use online search look for local businesses.
For 18% of marketers, local link building is the most important local SEO strategy they want to invest in. (99 Firms)
Local queries account for half of Google’s two trillion annual searches.
About 40% of small businesses outsource all or some of their local SEO operations.
58% of local businesses are not optimizing their sites for local SEO.

Improve your rank in local search results

Source: reviewtrackers.com

3. Search engine marketing stats

With Google’s latest and constant updates in its ranking algorithms, marketers’ challenge of creating SEO-optimized content only continues to intensify as time goes on.

Believe it or not, for many companies, organic rankings and traffic may be the number one channel for generating brand awareness, leads, and sales. Therefore, keeping an eye on those changes and the consequences triggered is paramount for a business’ growth or at least survival.

To help marketers to understand how search engines work and the latest trends and best practices to achieve satisfying SEO results, here’s a comprehensive list of the latest search engine marketing stats for 2023.

Google currently owns over 85% of the search engine market (Statista)
Google is the #1 desktop search engine with a 67.92% market share.
75% of users don’t even scroll past the first page of the search engine page.
87% of mobile owners use a search engine daily.
Leads from search engines have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (e.g., cold-calling, direct mail, etc.) have a 1.7% close rate.
The first five organic results receive 67.6% of all clicks on the first page of search engine results. (Zero Limit Web)
On average, only 25% of search engine users consult the second page of results.
91.8% of queries entered on search engines are long-tail keywords.
Compared to social media advertising, search engines generate 300% more traffic.

Source: Statista

4. Website SEO statistics

47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. (Neil Patel)
53% of mobile website visitors are likely to leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
51% of website traffic is driven by organic search.
Websites that show as the first listing on Google searches have an average CTR of 39% on mobile and 34.6% on desktop.
Only 33% of small-to-midsize businesses have optimized websites.

5. SEO vs PPc statistics

One of content marketers’ biggest curiosities is whether or not organic SEO or PPC is more successful in generating qualitative leads and increasing a business’s sales numbers.

To shed some light on that, let’s look at a couple of SEO vs PPC stats, indicating trends in 2023:

70% of online marketers say that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales.
SEO offers 20 times more traffic opportunities than PPC.
Doing SEO for a website is over 5 times more effective than PPC advertising.
53% of website traffic comes from organic search, while paid search drives only 27%.

6. SEO ROI statistics

One of the reasons some businesses invest a great amount of time and even money (allocated for writers) in content marketing is due to its incredible efficacy.

From many experts’ points of view and also confirmed by data, SEO – although an initiative that delivers results after an extended time – offers incredible ROI.

To back this up with numbers, here is what the latest SEO statistics have revealed:

The average timeframe to see ROI-positive results from local SEO is 4.76 months.
SEO generates an average ROI of between 200% – 275%.
The average ROI for a local SEO campaign is over 500% after three years.

Credit: https://firstpagesage.com/

7. Statistics about SEO experts

61% of B2B marketers state that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative.
67.7% of SEO marketers use two to five SEO tools to do their work, with 12% using more than six tools/software products.
49% of marketers state that SEO has greater ROI than any other channel.
Changes to SEO algorithms are important for 62% of B2B marketers.
41% of marketers think link building is the most difficult part of SEO.
72% of marketers consider relevancy the most critical factor for improving SEO.
Marketers prioritizing blogging are 13 times more likely to see ROI.
According to 93% of SEO experts, gaining a Featured Snippet box can increase visits to the featured website.
61% of marketers consider SEO efforts and boosting organic presence their top inbound marketing priority.
For 18% of marketers, local link building is the most important local SEO strategy they want to invest in.
36% of SEO experts believe the headline/title tag is the most important SEO element.

8. SEO research statistics

In-depth research is the key to SEO and content marketing success.

Nowadays, this seems clearer for writers aiming to excel at SEO marketing, given that the average time spent writing a blog post has increased by 74% in the last decade, with more and more emphasis being put on an extensive research process.

To briefly highlight the impact that qualitative research could have on SEO results, below, you’ll find a couple of insightful SEO stats for 2023.

71% of B2B researchers begin their research with generic Google searches.
39% of marketers think keyword research is the most difficult part of SEO.

Key takeaways

As data has indicated, SEO – when executed effectively – can help businesses achieve a plethora of gains – from generating greater brand awareness to increasing sales.

With mobile optimization and local SEO increasing in importance during recent years, neglecting these tactics can deprive businesses of tremendous benefits.

Moreover, when summarizing the insights revealed by all the SEO stats presented, one more needs to be added to the list. Marketers doing SEO need to pay extra attention to keyword research. It is a vital element for successful SEO and one of the most difficult aspects altogether to execute.