You also need to understand how search engines work to get the most out of your SEO efforts, including the critical statistics. This post covers the most important SEO statistics you should know in 2022.

Google has the largest market share

The name Google is synonymous with the internet. When an ordinary person talks about Google, chances are they’re not talking about Google the brand, but about the internet. That’s because it has roughly 91% of the global search engine market.

What’s more, Google comes preinstalled on almost all smartphones, making it the search engine people turn to when they want to browse the internet on a mobile device. Bing comes in second with a market share of just 2,29%, followed by Yahoo at 1,52%.

Since Google has the largest market share, its ranking algorithms are crucial when optimizing your website and content for SEO.

Most searches are made on mobile devices

Before 2015, most internet searches were made on desktop computers. In the second quarter of 2015, mobile searches outnumbered desktop searches for the first time, and the trend continues as more people around the world gain access to smartphones.

Mobile searches currently account for 63% of all organic traffic. With this many searches coming from mobile devices, optimizing your website for mobile should be a priority.

Fortunately, most website builders create responsive websites by default, so if your website is relatively new, there’s a good chance it’s mobile-friendly. If it’s relatively old, you may want to think about making it mobile-friendly.

Getting more SEO traffic can be challenging

Search engines rely on ranking algorithms to order search results. Understanding these algorithms is key to getting your website and individual pages to rank highly in search results. The main problem is that the algorithms keep changing and getting smarter, which means that tactics that once worked may no longer do the trick.

According to a recent survey of 1000 SEO professionals, SEO has changed a lot. Of the 1000 respondents, more than 60% said that SEO had changed significantly and become much harder over the past five years.

To make sure you adapt and adjust accordingly, you may need to hire a local marketing company to work on your organic conversions and revenue growth. For example, if you’re in Sydney, you may need a reliable SEO agency in Sydney, such as internet marketing gurus, to help you improve your SEO and rank highly in local search results.

Top results get a higher click-through rate

The number one reason companies and website owners optimize their sites and content is to get them onto the first page of search results. According to statistics, the top search result has a click-through rate of 37,1%.

What’s more, it gets ten times more traffic than the number ten result. The first five results get roughly 80% of organic clicks, and each step up among the top ten results can increase a page’s click-through rate by 38%.

Although you can’t always rank first in search results, the goal should always be to get there—or, failing that, into the top 10.

Paid advertising can boost brand awareness

There are two ways to get to the top of search engine results: optimize your website and pages for SEO, or use paid search advertising. Paid search ads appear above the organic results and at the bottom of the page.

If you can’t get to the top organically, the paid option can help you get there. However, to claim the top spot among paid ads, you need to optimize your ads for the keywords you want to rank for.

Every click on a paid ad costs money, so you may need to narrow down the keywords most likely to attract the most qualified prospects. Too many clicks without conversions may mean you won’t get a good return on investment. If done right, paid advertising can increase your brand awareness by up to 80%.