SEO Industry Benchmarks

SEO is one of the most competitive fields in digital marketing… and the competition is getting tougher with each day that goes by.

To stand out nowadays, it’s not enough to focus on your own KPIs – you need insight into your competitors’ performances and see how you stack up.

Without these insights, you won’t know which SEO areas should be improved and which are good enough to be left alone for the time being.

And while searching for SEO benchmarks used to be this tedious process that could take days until you find what you’re looking for (if you even find it), that’s not the case anymore.

In this report, we examined SEO metrics such as impressions, position, clicks, CTR, sessions, average session duration, views, engagement rate, and conversions across 15 different industries.

Let’s get started:

• Impressions
• Position
• Clicks
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Sessions
• Average Session Duration
• Views
• Engagement Rate
• Conversions

Impressions

Across all industries, the median number of impressions for August 2023 was 107.81K.

Let’s take a closer look at impressions across different industries:

Per data, we see there’s been a spike in impressions for Travel & Leisure and Health & Wellness in August and it could be attributed to the vacation period. 

Vacation seasons are times when people are more likely to travel and take leisure trips. As a result, the demand for travel-related services and products, as well as health and wellness offerings for preparation and relaxation, increases significantly.

Expert recommendation: To get more impressions, you need to get better SERP rankings. And one quick tip here that often goes overlooked is to determine which pages are wasting your crawl budget. Sometimes, Google has to establish a crawl budget for your website and limit the number of pages it regularly crawls. This can cause major issues if you have a large volume of content published. To fix this, look for pages with the least number of impressions in GSC and either delete them completely, 301 redirect them to similar pages, or do a content update on them.

Position

Across all industries, the median position for August 2023 was 30.34.

Let’s take a closer look at the position metric across different industries:

The median rank across all sectors stands at 30.34. Notably, only the Food and Ecommerce & Marketplaces sectors register a position below 20.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Consulting & Professional Services and Information Technology & Services with the lowest rankings.

Expert recommendation: You already know how important Meta tags are, but how often do you experiment with different versions? Meta tags are key for off-page SEO, and many marketers recommend testing different variants to see how they impact your CTR and overall SEO efforts.

Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks for August 2023 was 1.73K.

Let’s take a closer look at clicks across different industries:

The Automotive industry (8.71K) and Travel & Leisure (7.7K) secured the highest number of clicks, indicating successful CTA conversions.

For the Automotive industry, the large number of clicks can be due to consumers relying heavily on online resources when deciding which car to buy. They use Google to gather information, compare models, read reviews, and find local dealerships. Often, they will click on several websites to get more information.

Expert recommendation: You need to leverage Google Search Console analytics reports to understand better what type of headlines and content get more clicks. Pay attention to which topics your audience is most interested in and which types of headlines are the most effective in “selling the click”. Then, try to replicate the successful model in future posts.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Across all industries, the median CTR for August 2023 was 1.56%.

Let’s take a closer look at the CTR across different industries:

Per the latest data, Education websites have registered the highest CTR (2.73%). Educational content tends to provide valuable information, which can be highly relevant to users’ search queries. High-quality educational content may naturally attract more clicks if it addresses users’ needs effectively.

Expert recommendation: If possible, you should always aim to take up more Google real estate with sitelinks. Those are the links that appear beneath the Meta description and help users find relevant information faster with shortcuts. Sitelinks can positively affect CTR as they catch the user’s attention and offer several pieces of information in one result.

Sessions

Across all industries, the median number of sessions for August 2023 was 3.88K.

Let’s take a closer look at sessions across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear dominates in terms of session count. Being consumer-focused, Apparel & Footwear naturally attracts more traffic.

Industries leaning more towards B2B might have fewer sessions due to extended decision cycles. Take the Construction industry, for example, which had only 1.61K sessions in August.

Expert recommendation: Building content clusters is a great way to increase your number of sessions and leave a good impression on visitors. Instead of just covering one topic, create content for other relevant insights around it as well. Chances are, users will continue down the “information road” and keep reading as long as it’s relevant to their question and helps them comprehend the topic better.

Average Session Duration

Across all industries, the median value for the average session duration for August 2023 was 2m 38s.

Let’s take a closer look at the average session duration across different industries:

Education (3m 20s) and Travel & Leisure (3m 16s) have longer session durations, suggesting engaging content.

Travel decisions usually require a good amount of research (also, websites often have virtual tours that prolong the sessions) and the booking processes can be time-consuming.

On the other hand, educational websites are usually packed with content (course descriptions, syllabi, reviews, and articles on specific subjects) and users often spend considerable time diving deep into the material.

Expert recommendation: When it comes to website design, less is more. Many businesses make the mistake of going too far with their website design, which can actually have a counter effect and lead to shorter sessions. Keep the design on your page simple and make sure you’re not adding elements that might confuse your readers.

Views

Across all industries, the median number of sessions for August 2023 was 9.04K.

Let’s take a closer look at views across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear (105.02K) and E-commerce & Marketplaces (45.96K) generate the most views. The nature of these industries, combined with modern marketing strategies and the innate human desire to explore (and shop), can lead to a high number of views on their websites.

The only two industries that had lower than 7K views include Construction and SaaS.

Expert recommendation: While the views metric is worth tracking, it’s much more useful to tie it to the bigger picture using the Google Analytics pageview report within the tool. This way, you’re getting a much more comprehensive overview of your website’s performance, including data like where your viewers are coming from, what time of the day they visit, which devices they use, and more.

Engagement Rate

Across all industries, the median engagement rate for August 2023 was 56.23%.

Let’s take a closer look at the engagement rate across different industries:

E-commerce & Marketplaces (63.86%), Health & Wellness (62.22%), and Travel & Leisure (61.55%) lead the engagement game, suggesting captivating user experiences.

Ecomms and Marketplaces often use recommender systems that increase engagement, as well as interactive elements (product zoom, reviews, Q&A, and related product suggestions) that increase interactions.

Similarly, Health & wellness websites frequently offer a rich content blend that can meet various user preferences and encourage more interaction (BMI calculators, symptom checkers, etc.).

Expert recommendation: When it comes to measuring engagement, it’s best not to rely on a single metric. Instead, you should make a list of 5-8 engagement metrics that are most relevant to your efforts and prioritize them. However, tracking different metrics within GA4 can be a bit tedious, and you’ll probably have to compile them in a separate spreadsheet for easier organization. Or, you can simply use our Google Analytics 4 Engagement Overview dashboard and track all of your key metrics from one easy-to-monitor place. You can set it up and create a dashboard like this in less than 10 minutes.

Conversions

Across all industries, the median number of conversions for August 2023 was 182.

Let’s take a closer look at conversions across different industries:

When it comes to conversion, Apparel & Footwear are undeniably leading the board.

The Apparel & Footwear industry often experiences seasonal trends, with spikes in demand during certain times of the year, such as back-to-school shopping, holiday seasons, and seasonal fashion trends.

These periods of increased consumer interest and shopping can lead to higher conversion rates, which might explain the high number of conversions in August.

Expert recommendation: Practically, the only tested and proven way to boost conversions is to… well, do just that – test and prove what works. Focus on split-testing each big element on your page, from your copywriting and CTA button to the design and overall layout. Even the best in the industry can’t hit a home run on their first try and turn to A/B testing to increase their conversion rates.