As the old adage goes, “If you build it, they will come.”
Wrong.
That couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to ranking on the first page of Google…
Popular SEO Statistics on Content and CTR for 1st vs 2nd Page in Google
First, let’s note that there are other search engines to consider, but Google still dominates with over 70% of global market share, China’s Baidu has 14% and Bing has 13% (NetMarketShare).
A study by Ahrefs indicates that 90.63% of content receives zero traffic from Google (Ahrefs).
According to a number of studies, only 25 percent of users go to the 2nd page of Google (WebFX).
Data from Chitika reports that page 2 accounts for just 4.8% of Google traffic (SearchEngineWatch).
Brian Dean from Backlinko, reports even less, with just 0.78% of users visiting a website on the 2nd page (Backlinko).
…And he reports an astonishing 31.7% CTR for the #1 result in Google, based on his analysis of over 5 million pages.
Google reported in 2009 that they use over 200 ranking factors (likely much more now), thus without implementing even just the basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, you can possibly get lost in the sea of content on the internet. A lot of that is due to a lack of keyword research.
If your content marketing plan doesn’t start with Google’s Keyword Planner, you’re making a huge mistake.
The Google Keyword Planner has the most important data and stats you’ll find on this page, that’s because it’s essentially a virtual time machine with data reporting as far back as the last 5 years (perhaps more in some situations).
On-page SEO starts with finding the best keyword(s) for a particular page of content. Perform keyword research to find the top keywords to target, preferably long-tail phrases that don’t have a lot of competition. There are plenty of paid tools, but I’ve found the best and most accurate tool comes straight from Google, the Google Keyword Planner. It lists keyword suggestions by popularity and competition, as well as data on Google Ads (if applicable).
Once you’ve found your targeted keyword(s), you can now craft the title of your post.
SEO Statistics on Headlines, Title Tag, URL slugs and more…
Source: https://winbound.com/blog/optimize-for-serp/
Google’s ultimate goal, to provide answers to a user’s query, and if you can do that better than anyone, then you have a shot at outranking some of authority names in this space. Consider ways to make your title better and different from the competition. Here’s some data that can help:
Keep it short – Google typically uses the first 60 characters, staying under that limit you can expect 90% of your titles to display without being truncated. You can also use Moz’s Title Tag Preview Tool to see how a title would appear in Google.
As far as the meta description (the description shown underneath the title in Google), Matt Cutts, Google’s former Head of Search, clarified that Google no longer uses keywords from your meta tag as a ranking factor. Though it’s argued that a higher CTR is a ranking factor, thus it would be a good idea to optimize your meta description for a high CTR.
Though John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, states that keywords in URLs are overrated, noting that people won’t even see them on mobile. Thus best practices are to make it under 5 words, and optimize it for users not for Google.
The Latest SEO Stats on Content Length and Why It Varies, and Data on How to Optimize Your Content
Long form content does really well in Google… to an extent. If you want to ask Google what “5+5” is, the answer would be short and sweet. My point is your content should be as long as it needs to be, or at least a little longer than your competition. A SERP Analyzer Tool (Surfer SEO, MarketMuse, etc.) can help you determine the optimal content length based on your competition.
According to HubSpot’s Data, the ideal blog post length is about 2,100 to 2,400 words. But again, this varies on the search term. The best practice would be to analyze the SERPS for your search term, and determine the optimal word count based on your competitors.
Optimize for dwell time – According to WordStream’s latest data, a longer dwell time (ie. longer time on site after clicking on your Google search result), leads to better rankings. Dwell time arguably became a strong ranking factor after the launch of Google’s RankBrain algorithm in 2015. Best practice includes making your content scannable, and easily digestible. Nobody likes a wall of text. Bounce rate is arguably a ranking factor and if a user doesn’t feel like reading a wall of text and instead opts for your competitors’ easily digestible content that could be the thing that pushes you down the SERPS. A few ideas could be:
Use bullet points (like these ones) to break up content and offer key takeaways.
Outline your post with headings – According to John Mueller, Google uses headings “to understand the content on the page better.” Make it distinctive as far as possible and make sure that it is different from what has been written in the same niche. The aforementioned Google Keyword Planner provides keyword suggestions, but even better you can do a competitive analysis in the SERPS with various tools to see what your competitors are doing, what subheadings they’re using, what keywords they’re targeting, etc.
Write High Quality, Original Content – This should be a given, but duplicate content is a huge no-no in Google’s eyes, and the landmark Google Panda algorithm that targeted “thin” content in 2011 has been constantly updated ever since. Before publishing your post, use a free tool like Copyscape or Plagium to make sure it’s 100% unique.
Optimal Keyword Density – 1-2% is often cited as ideal, any more than that and Google thinks your keyword stuffing, and that can negatively impact your post. A good rule of thumb is to use it in the title (H1), in a subheading (H2), as the filename and alt text for an image, and in the content a few times. You could use similar keywords and phrases, Latex Semantic Indexing (LSI) understands that they mean the same thing (or something similar) and could improve keyword density, and thus your rankings.
The Latest Data on Links – Both Backlinks and Internal Links
A lot of SEO copywriters try to game Google’s “link juice” and try to minimize links on a page, hoping that increases the value of a single link on a page.
But when’s the last time you read a post that ranked #1 in Google that only had one link?
A well thought out post has sources, and links to relevant information.
Relevant Internal Links – Internal links (links that link to other pages on your website) are not quite as strong as backlinks, but you have control over it. Since this post is related to SEO, I can internally link to my SEO services page, which gives Google a good idea of what my website is about, and shows a relationship between both pages.
Experts state that a good rule of thumb is 4 internal links per post over 1500 words.
The trickier park is backlinks. And according to Google, these should be acquired organically. Thus if you utilize the aforementioned tactics, it should be enough for content creators to find your content organically in Google when they create a blog post (like I have for this very post). We know that it will always depend on your search phrase, and it isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. Of course, you can promote your content on various platforms, including social media though…
The graphic above from CognitiveSEO shows that sites with the most number of shares, comments and likes on social networking sites have the highest rankings.
It should be noted that correlation doesn’t imply causation, as it could be that the sites that get the most traffic (which usually have a high Domain Authority / backlink profile), get the most social shares.
What are SEO copywriting best practices?
You can’t pay for backlinks, that’s a black hat tactic that’s been made clear by Google. But you can hire a writer.
Good content is an essential pillar for marketing, and a good writer can help acquire backlinks.
Now personally, I’m weary of “SEO Writers”, they often write for search engines and not users.
I’d advise you to hire a good writer, plenty can be found for under $50 for an in-depth post (~1000 words) on Upwork or Fiverr. Do the keyword research yourself and come up with the headlines of the articles you want. Once they send it back to you, you can then make a few optimizations for SEO. This, I’ve found is the most cost efficient… especially with my SEO experience.
Alternatively, you can find an experienced writer who has a popular blog, thus they’ve demonstrated exactly what it takes to rank in Google. But in my experience, good luck finding any for under $100/hr. At that rate, for your average small business, the return is very thin, or very long-term.
Use AI Copywriting to Scale Your Content
If you’re on a tighter budget, you can consider using AI copywriting to scale your content needs.
Writer’s block is a real thing, and an AI Copywriter can help you find new content or topics. There’s many tools out there, they’re all based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 state-of-the-art natural language processing system. The difference is in the feature set. Now many of these tools state that these shouldn’t be used alone, they lack the subject expertise and personalization that a human writer offers… but it can give you a good starting point.
A lot of people scoffed at AI copywriters in the past (and I’ve used them), but they’re getting better and better. Nobody thought a computer could beat a human at Chess, until it happened when Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1996.
Definitely not something I would recommend to create entire blog posts. But as a tool that can help outline your blog post, and crush writer’s block.
Final Thoughts
We hope curate all the relevant statistics for landing on the first page of Google. If there’s anything we missed, or you would like us to add, please let us know in the comments below!
If this post helps you in any way, the greatest compliment we can receive is a link to this post. If you would like me to expand on anything, or if you have any additional questions please email me at jonathanjsoriano@gmail.com.
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
