Here are all the 125 blogging statistics that matter most to bloggers. These are the blogging stats that tell you how to get more traffic and make more money.
Habits of Bloggers
Time Spent
35% of pro bloggers work more than 20 hours a week on their blogs. (ConvertKit)
The average blog post takes 3 hours and 57 minutes to complete. (Orbit Media)
Bloggers that spend 6+ hours per post are seeing the strongest results. (Orbit Media)
Frequency
Around half of all bloggers publish 2-4 posts per month. (Orbit Media)
The blogging frequency that produces the strongest traffic results is once per day. (Orbit Media)
A full 50% of the bloggers, who plan to publish weekly, write their posts the day before or the day of publishing. Even 47% of bloggers who plan to publish once per month are writing the day before or the day of. (ConvertKit)
Goals and Struggles
52% of bloggers struggle to find time to create and promote content. (Orbit Media)
Bloggers who earn less than $50,000 per year are 4.2 times as likely to have difficulty with self-discipline and motivation compared to higher-income bloggers. (Growth Badger)
The top three most common goals for bloggers are; become self-employed (25%), have an outlet for creative expression (17%), and build an audience (16%). (ConvertKit)
Blog Post Content
Titles
Blog post titles with 11 to 13 words get the most traffic. (Hubspot)
Blog titles that lead with a number have a 36% higher click-through rate. (Backlinko)
Using numbers in blog titles increases social shares by 200%. (Razor Social)
Titles that end with brackets have a 38% higher click-through rate. (Backlinko)
Post titles with positive or negative emotional sentiment improved CTR by 7%. (Backlinko)
Title tags that contain a question (How, Why, What & Who) have a 14.1% higher CTR versus pages that don’t have a question in their title. (Backlinko)
Meta Descriptions
Pages with a meta description receive 5.8% more clicks than those without. (Backlinko)
40.61% of pages in Google results have meta descriptions that truncate. (Ahrefs)
Google rewrites meta descriptions 62.78% of the time in search results. (Ahrefs)
Post URLs
URLs containing your target keyword phrase have a 45% higher click-through rate compared to URLs that don’t contain the keyword phrase. (Backlinko)
URLs at position #1 are on average 9.2 characters shorter than URLs that rank in position #10. (Backlinko)
Word Count
The average length of a blog post is 1236 words long, which is 56% longer than in 2014. (Orbit Media)
Bloggers that write 2000+ words per post are reporting the best results, but only 11% of bloggers write posts that have at least 2000 words. (Orbit Media)
Blog posts with 3000+ words get an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than posts shorter than 1000 words. (Backlinko)
Compared to lower-income bloggers, bloggers earning over $50K per year are seven times as likely to have their top-performing blog posts be over 3,000 words. (Growth Badger)
Longer form content tends to rank for more keywords. A single 2000+ word blog post, that ranks in the top 10 on Google for a specific phrase, will also rank in the top 10 for 212 other keyword phrases. (Ahrefs)
Bloggers who earn over $50,000/year say their most popular blog posts are 2,424 words long on average: 83% longer than lower-income bloggers. (Growth Badger)
The Body of the Post
“Quality of content” is rated the #1 most important success factor among all bloggers. (Growth Badger)
Comprehensive content with a high “Content Grade” (via Clearscope), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. (Backlinko)
73% of bloggers who earn over $50,000 per year say they focus their content on the interests of a very specific group. (Growth Badger)
Bloggers with a formal editing process were about 50% more likely to report strong results. (Orbit Media)
Short sentences increase content readability by 58%. (NN Group)
Images, lists, and statistics are the three most used elements within a blog post. (Orbit Media)
Bloggers with 10+ images in a post are seeing the strongest results, but only 3% of bloggers post 10+ images. (Orbit Media)
Nearly 70% of bloggers now report going back to older content and making updates. (Orbit Media)
Bloggers who earn $50K+ per year from their blogs are 5.8 times as likely to publish case studies and 3.2 times as likely to publish original research. (Growth Badger)
Blogging Income
Pro bloggers have an average revenue of $185,975, with $47,912 in expenses and $138,046 in profits. (ConvertKit)
Amateur bloggers have $16,267 in average revenue, $6,769 in expenses, and $9,497 in profits. (ConvertKit)
Bloggers who do not earn money spend an average of $953 building their blogs. (ConvertKit)
Sources by Income Tier
The top five sources of income for bloggers making between $2k to $7.5 are; ads (35%), affiliates (27%), sponsored posts (14%), services/consulting (7%), and online courses (3%).
Bloggers making between $7.5 and $25k per month get their income from; affiliates (38%), ads (30%), sponsored posts (11%), online courses (10%), and services/consulting (1%).
Bloggers generating $25k per month make their money from online courses (80%), affiliates (12%), ads (3%), and sponsored posts (3%).
Products and Services
95% of pro bloggers have a product or service for sale. (ConvertKit)
Bloggers who earn over $50,000/yr are 5.6 times as likely to sell their own product or service as compared with low-income bloggers. (Growth Badger)
The top three products sold by pro bloggers are digital products (74%), services (52%), and physical products (15%). (ConvertKit)
Ad Networks and Affiliate Programs
The two most used ad networks by bloggers making $2000+/per month are MediaVine (40%) and AdThrive (32%).
The affiliate programs that account for the highest percentage of a blogger’s affiliate income are; Amazon (24%), surveys (19%), hosting (17%), and rewards (16%).
Income Sources by Blogging Niches
The three blogging niches with the highest median monthly income are Food ($9169), Personal Finance ($9100), and Lifestyle ($5199).
Food bloggers make more money from ads than any other niche. 41% of their income comes from ads. Online courses (19%), sponsored posts (19%), and affiliates (10%) make up the rest of their income.
The Personal Finance blog niche makes more money from affiliates than any other niche ($4727 per month).
Employees and Writers
Out of all pro bloggers, 20% have at least one full-time employee, 30% have at least one part-time employee, and 53% work with at least one contractor. (ConvertKit)
Bloggers who earn over $50,000/yr pay content writers 3.6 times as much as lower-income bloggers do. (Growth Badger)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The #1 traffic source for high-income bloggers ($50k+/yr) is Google organic search. (Growth Badger)
Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, says links, content, and RankBrain are the top 3 factors for Google’s search results. (Search Engine Watch)
Keyword Research
69.7% of Google search queries contain four words or more. (Ahrefs)
Bloggers who earn $50,000+ per year are 4.3 times as likely to use keyword research when deciding what to write about when compared with low-income bloggers. (Growth Badger)
The #1 ranking page in Google, on average, will also rank on the first page for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords. (Ahrefs)
Click-Through Rate
94% of clicks in the SERPs go to organic results. (Search Engine Watch)
The number one result in Google’s organic search results has an average click-through rate of 31.7%. (Backlinko)
The first three Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks. (Backlinko)
Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results that appear on the 2nd page. (Backlinko)
On average, moving up a single spot in the search results will increase the click-through rate by 30.8%. (Backlinko)
Time on Site
Lower bounce rates correlate with higher rankings on Google. (Backlinko)
Increasing time on site by 3 seconds correlates to ranking a single position higher in the search results. (Backlinko)
The average “time on site” for a post ranking on the 1st page of Google is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. (Backlinko)
The Time it Takes to Rank on Page 1
90.63% of pages and posts get no organic search traffic from Google. (Ahrefs)
The average Top 10 Google ranking page is 2+ years old. And those that rank at position one are almost 3 years old. (Ahrefs)
Only 5.7% of all pages in the Top 10 Google search results are less than 1 year old. The majority of that 5.7% managed to achieve a first-page ranking in 61–182 days. (Ahrefs)
My special keyword research formula, which is in my course, focuses in on this 5.7%. This is why my posts are able to rank on the first page of Google in months rather than years. (Go Here to Find Out More)
Featured Snippets
12.29% of all Google queries have featured snippets in their search results. (Ahrefs)
A featured snippet at the #1 position only gets 8.6% of clicks, while the traditional ranking page right below it gets 19.6% of clicks. (Ahrefs)
30.9% of all featured snippets rank at the very top position. (Ahrefs)
99.58% of featured snippet websites already rank in the top 10 for that search phrase. (Ahrefs)
The top three types of posts with the most featured snippets are recipe, best, and vs posts. (Ahrefs)
Linkbuilding
The domain authority tied to a blog post is more important than the page authority of the post itself. (Backlinko)
66.31% of all pages and posts don’t have even a single backlink. (Ahrefs)
The number one result in Google has 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10. (Backlinko)
87% of SEOs say bloggers should include two to five internal links in a blog post. (Databox)
42% of SEOs spend equal time on building internal and external links. (Databox)
Email Marketing
Gmail has the highest email client market share at 38% followed by Apple iPhone (28%), Apple Mail (10%), and Outlook (9%). (Email Client Share)
75% of people with Gmail use their mobile devices to access their email. (TechCrunch)
Email subject lines are truncated on mobile devices once it reaches between 33 and 43 characters. (AWeber)
57% of pro bloggers have at least 5000 email subscribers. (ConvertKit)
Collection
The end of the post email opt-in is the most used location. 75% of pro bloggers have an email opt-in at the end of their posts. (ConvertKit)
Bloggers who earn over $50,000 per year use an average of 2.4 email address collection methods, while lower-income bloggers use only 0.7. (Growth Badger)
53% of bloggers who earn over $50K per year offer downloadable bonus content in exchange for email addresses, but only 11% of lower-income bloggers do this. (Growth Badger)
Open and CTR
The average email open rate is 21.33%, and the average click-through rate is 2.62%. (MailChimp)
Welcome emails have an average open rate of 82%. (GetResponse)
21% of sent emails are opened within the first hour of delivery. (GetResponse)
The worst open and click-through rates are on weekends. (OptInMonster)
Subject lines with 6 to 10 words have the highest open rate. (Business2Community)
Triggered emails have the highest average engagement rates. (GetResponse)
Unsubscribe Rate
42.3% of people will delete an email if it’s not optimized for mobile. (Sales Cycle)
The top 3 reasons people unsubscribe from an email list are; too many emails (59%), info no longer relevant (43%), or don’t recognize the brand or remember signing up. (43%) (OptinMonster)
The average unsubscribe rate is 0.2%. (GetResponse)
Signatures
Email signatures that have a photo receive 32% more replies than emails without it. (Wise Stamp)
The email closings with the highest response rates are; thanks in advance (65.7%) and thanks (63%). (Boomerang)
Social Media
76% of U.S. consumers purchased a product after seeing a brand’s social post. (Curalate)
The major social networks with the highest referral traffic growth are Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook. (Statista)
Pinterest
Related Pins account for 40% of engagement on Pinterest. (Medium)
85% of Pinterest users are using the mobile app. (HootSuite)
The Pinterest algorithm pushes fresh pins up and duplicate pins down. (SMA Marketing)
The image size that performs the best is 2:3 or 600×900 pixels. (SMA Marketing)
50% of Pinterest Pin referral visits happen 3.5 months after first pinning. (Piqora)
Instagram
IG image posts receive 27.55% more likes than permanent video posts, and 13.55% more likes than carousel posts. (Mention)
The average Instagram post contains 10.74 hashtags. The median is 6 hashtags. (Mention)
Here is the percent of IG accounts with <1000 followers (52.35%), 1k to 10k (37.41%), 10,001 to 50k (7.58%), 50,001 to 100k (1.2%), 100,001+ (0.32%). (Mention)
The Instagram accounts with 1000 to 5000 followers have the highest engagement rate (5.6%). (Hype Auditor)
IG posts with captions over 1000 characters have the highest engagement. (Mention)
Instagram’s median engagement rate is 1.6%. That’s 17x higher than Facebook posts and 33x higher than a tweet. (Rival IQ)
Facebook
Users watch 85% of Facebook videos without sound. (Digiday)
Facebook users are 400% more likely to watch live streams than recorded videos. (Facebook)
Square Facebook videos get 35% more views than landscape videos. (Buffer)
The types of Facebook page content with the highest engagement rates are; Video (6.15%), Photo (4.48%), Blog Post (2.69%), and Text Only Status (1.38%). (We Are Social)
YouTube
The average length of a YouTube video ranking on the first page of search results is 14 minutes and 50 seconds. (Backlinko)
Videos that produce new subscribers rank higher on YouTube. (Backlinko)
70% of what people watch on YouTube is determined by its recommendation algorithm. (Cnet)
On Average, a YouTube channel receives $18 per 1,000 ad views. This equates to $3 to $5 per 1000 YouTube video views. (Influencer)
Twitter
Tweets with video attract 10x more engagement than those without. (Twitter)
Tweets with only one hashtag are 69% more likely to get retweeted than those with two hashtags. (Hubspot)
71% of users are checking the Twitter platform for news updates, which is the number one reason why users check their tweets. (Pew)
Journalists account for almost 25% of verified Twitter users. (Adweek)
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