SEO Statistics 2017

We’ve discussed some key SEO concepts so far. Now let’s look at some hard stats. Remember: your talent is in your choices. That’s some sagely advice I received during conservatory theatre training — a story for another time. So what does “your talent is in your choices” mean? It means I’m going to present you with some facts and statistics, and what you do with it is up to you. Remember how we discussed the importance of mobile and local search? Good, because we’re going to examine some numbers that illustrate how important those concepts are. Let’s get to the data:

• 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine at least once a day. [Business 2 Community]
• 76% of local searches result in a phone call. [Business 2 Community]
• 60% of American adults use smartphones and tablets to search for local product and service information. [Business 2 Community]
•  50% of customers who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day, and 34% who searched on a computer/tablet did the same. [Business 2 Community]
• 46% of all searches on Google are local. [Business 2 Community]
• 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within the one day. [Business 2 Community]
• Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, has stated high quality content and link building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website for search. [Search Engine Watch]
• A July 2015 study by Moz and BuzzSumo analyzed the shares and links of over 1 million articles. The study found that long form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content. [Moz]
• Marketers see SEO as becoming more effective with 82% reporting effectiveness is on the rise and 42% of this group stating effectiveness is increasing significantly. [MarketDive]
• A Backlinko study reported that using a single image within content will increase search engine rankings. [Backlinko]
• 62% of B2B marketers and 51% of B2C marketers have optimized their blogs for mobile in order to improve SEO. [Social Media Examiner]
• Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 111%. [Backlinko]
• 75% percent of Internet use will be mobile in 2017, up from 71% in 2016. [Reuters]
• By 2019, 85% of US Internet traffic will be video. [Cisco]