SEO By Industry

Fact: SEO Results Vary By Industry

Want your products and services to rank on Google? Knowledge is power. Here’s everything you need to know about the most popular industries for SEO.

How SEO Varies by Industry (with Report📝)

Ryan C.

SEO Mystic & Agency Founder

May 27, 2023
11 minutes

When it comes to digital marketing, SEO ROI is one of the best. According to Neil Patel (one of the OG’s of SEO), you could be looking at an ROI of 500% at minimum. And at maximum? In the thousands of percent!

That’s promising for those hoping to benefit from SEO. There’s one thing to highlight though: why such a big range?

It’s easy to think, “Yea! Make my SEO strategy pay off to the tune of 1000% ROI”. Not so fast!

Any SEO specialist worth their salt can tell you that search results are easier to master in certain industries than others.

But why? Well, that’s one of the things we’re going to get into in this article right now. We’ll also talk about SEO benchmarks and highlight the most important ones to watch.

To wrap it up, we’ll give you a rundown of the most common industries for SEO, along with their benchmarks for SEO performance.

Are you here to see the benchmark data in your industry? Click here to skip ahead. Otherwise, read on and enjoy the ride!

What industries benefit most from SEO?

So what industries benefit most from SEO? That depends…

Let’s start by breaking down a few reasons why different industries generally perform better in Google searches than others.

Here are the main reasons:

Search Volume (the size of the SEO opportunity).
Competition Level (how many active players are competing in your SEO market).
User Behavior (refers to the way that the audience seeks out solutions in search).

1. Search Volume

Whenever we do keyword research, we can see how many people are searching for solutions in your industry.

When we look for keywords, we are looking for three main types:

Broad Keywords (shoes, plumbing service)
Long-Tail Keywords (best running shoes for women, low-cost plumbing for seniors)
Geo-Targeted Keywords (shoe stores near me, plumbers in Vancouver)

By looking at these groups of keywords using SEO tools that show the number of searches taking place each month for a given search term.

In fact, even if you use a free tool like the Google Ads Keyword Planner, you can see great data like this:

When looking at this data, the obvious logic might seem to be “the more search volume, the better”. But that’s actually not true.

The reality is closer to this: “The more high-intent, low-competition keywords there are, the better”.

Let me show you what I mean by that.

2. Competition Level

If there are a lot of low-competition keywords in your industry, your chances of SEO success will be higher.

Why does the competition level vary? Here are a few reasons:

Some industries are late to the SEO party. For those, they will have an easier time increasing their organic traffic.
Some industries have been engaged in an SEO battle for years.
Some industries that rely on local SEO for lead generation are highly competitive in densely populated regions.

Again, we can see which keywords are less competitive by using common tools that SEO experts rely on. Here’s a screenshot of some low-competition keywords in the plumbing industry:

Anybody who is providing SEO Services can take one look at that and see there is a major opportunity there! Of course, identifying the opportunity is one step. Creating a plan and creating content is another.

3. User Behavior

One last major consideration when it comes to SEO: user behavior. Specifically, we care about something called “search intent”.

Search intent refers to the audience’s behavior when searching. Are they tire-kickers or are they ready to buy? The data can tell us everything we need to know.

For example, a keyword like “low-cost drain plumbing” will likely have a lower conversion rate than if we remove the words “low cost”.

That’s based on the assumption that people looking for the lowest price will be more challenging to convert unless you provide the lowest possible prices for them.

However, take a look at how competitive the keyword “drain plumbing” is:

Is it impossible to rank for these search terms? Not exactly, especially if we are targeting localized searches. However, ranking for these keywords will take a much longer time.

Confused yet? This is why it helps immensely to hire an SEO Agency to assist!

An advanced SEO plan will consider the above variables when conducting research and coming up with a viable plan.

Why Do SEO Benchmarks Matter?

If you’ve ever worked on user experience, B2B marketing, or search advertising, here’s some good news: you are in familiar territory!

SEO benchmarks matter for the same reason any other marketing benchmarks matter. That is, they give you a number to compare your own results against.

For example, imagine you are running a B2B SEO project for a company selling accounting services to corporations. You’d not compare to benchmarks for a local service provider.

That’s because local service providers are targeting a very different audience. Is there an overlap? Almost certainly. But to know how well we are doing, we need to compare apples to apples.

What Are The Most Important SEO Benchmarks?

There are a huge number of SEO stats we could look at. But to keep it simple, here are the ones we think are most important to start with. We’ll also focus on these in our SEO by industry rundown below:

Organic Traffic: Measures whether or not SEO efforts are driving traffic from targeted online searches).
Click-through Rate (CTR): Measures how often people click on your website when they see it on the SERP (search engine results page).
Conversion Rate: Measures how many people visit your web pages via online search and then go on to become paying customers.
Bounce Rate: Measures how many people leave your web pages immediately after clicking through. This is generally a good stat to see how much your content aligns with what your target audience is looking for.

You’ll notice that all of the above are statistics that have to do with results. In other words, we aren’t concerned with which industries typically have the fastest page load speed, for example.

We are interested in benchmarks that prove the viability of SEO in each particular industry.

Agreed? Okay… let’s get to our list then!

SEO Benchmarks by Industry

We’ve sourced data from public reports, our own SEO projects, local SEO statistics, and other data sources to compile this list. We aim to produce the most comprehensive list of SEO stats by industry.

Here we go!

Industry Report Legend

Organic traffic: Average % increase gained from SEO projects.
Click-through rate: The average rate of clicks from search engine results. 1% is low, and 5% is high. A high rate means it is easier to rank & lower ranks get more clicks due to the nature of the industry.
Conversion rate: The % of SEO traffic that becomes a paying customer after clicking on your website. 1% is low, and 4% is high.
Bounce rate: Average bounce rate for SEO content in the industry. A lower bounce rate generally indicates that visitors are more engaged and likely to take further actions, such as making a purchase.

👉 Click any of the titles below or search to see our industry guides!

Great SEO Opportunity

Challenging SEO Opportunity

SEO for General Contractors

The construction industry is highly competitive, making a robust SEO strategy essential for visibility and lead generation.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Healthcare & Medical

SEO is critical in this industry as individuals seek trusted information and providers for healthcare services.

Organic traffic: 60-70%
Click-through rate: 2-4%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 60-70%

SEO For Roofing Companies

Like other contractors, roofing companies stand to benefit significantly from strong local SEO.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 3-4%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Dental

In a highly localized industry like dentistry, local SEO is crucial for attracting new patients.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 3-5%
Conversion rate: 3-4%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Travel Companies

As many consumers research travel options online, strong SEO can significantly affect visibility and bookings.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 2-4%
Conversion rate: 2-4%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Pharmaceutical Industry

Given the highly regulated nature of this industry, SEO must be carefully managed to ensure compliance.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 55-65%

SEO for Hotel & Hospitality

Given the nature of this industry, there's a significant opportunity to leverage local SEO strategies and worldwide SEO opportunities.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 3-5%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 55-65%

SEO for Automotive

Given the large purchase decisions involved, potential customers often spend considerable time researching, making SEO important.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 60-65%

SEO for Higher Education

SEO is key for attracting prospective students in the competitive higher education sector.

Organic traffic: 45-55%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Fashion Brands

With highly visual content and often fierce competition, SEO is critical for visibility in the fashion industry.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 1-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 60-70%

SEO for Manufacturing Companies

For B2B companies like those in manufacturing, SEO can play a key role in lead generation.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Real Estate Agents

Real estate websites often rely heavily on images, making load time and mobile SEO critical considerations.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for HVAC Contractors

Competition can be intense locally for HVAC contractors, making local SEO crucial.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 3-4%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 55-65%

SEO for CBD Products

Given the growth and legal complexities of this industry, SEO can be a crucial element of a successful strategy.

Organic traffic: 40-50%
Click-through rate: 2-4%
Conversion rate: 1-3%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

SEO for Doctors and Medical Practices

Health information is commonly searched for online, making SEO a key part of a practice's online presence.

Organic traffic: 60-70%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 2-3%
Bounce rate: 60-70%

SEO for Construction

For construction companies, local SEO and informative content can help engage potential clients.

Organic traffic: 50-60%
Click-through rate: 2-3%
Conversion rate: 1-2%
Bounce rate: 55-60%

More coming soon!

There are a lot more industries to evaluate! Therefore, we plan to update this list in the future as soon as we possibly can 🫡

More coming soon!

There are a lot more industries to evaluate! Therefore, we plan to update this list in the future as soon as we possibly can 🫡