130+ SEO Statistics to Plan Your 2025 Strategy

Google leads the way in answering questions.

People rely on Google search to find authentic information. More often than not, they use Google search results as a source of truth while validating their opinions or clearing confusion. As an expert in your industry, you can use these search results to create information and drive people to your website. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) remains one of the most critical pillars of digital marketing, helping businesses increase visibility, drive organic traffic, and achieve long-term growth. As search engines evolve and user behavior shifts, data-backed insights are more important than ever to refine strategies and stay competitive. 

Let’s look at some interesting SEO statistics to understand what to expect from SEO in the foreseeable future. 

General SEO statistics

Below are some critical SEO trends businesses should know to plan their search strategy:

• 13.5% of marketers stated that content strategy and/or production is their planned priority focus area in 2024.
• 27.6% of query searches undergo refinement, but only 25% don't result in a click.
• SEO was the lead marketing strategy for 49% of B2B companies in 2022.
• Organizations with the lowest SEO maturity put 30% more bandwidth into SEO efforts than those with medium maturity.
• In 2023, the three key disruptors to the SEO industry were E-E-A-T and content production challenges, proving and tracking SEO value, and generative AI. 
• Less than 1% of users get to the second page of the search engine results page.
• Google Search, Google Image, and Google Maps account for 92.96% of global traffic.
• 51% of search engine results pages (SERP) contain image packs.
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate compared to only 1.7% outbound leads.
• Businesses that make it into local packs enjoy a 100+ increase in clicks, and businesses in position 2 experience the most engagement. 
• The top challenge digital marketers and SEO specialists face is adapting to AI advancements in 2023.
• On average, organic search produced nearly 40% of website traffic across six key industries in 2023.
• Search engine marketing and optimization qualified over 30% of marketing budgets in 2023.
• 13.8% of SEO pros said content creation was the top challenge in 2023. However, in 2024, 22.2% of SEO practitioners say algorithm changes have become the primary concern.

Google search statistics

Google processes around 40,000 searches every second. Look at these Google search statistics to help you understand ranking factors, opportunities to create featured snippets, and more.

• 86.6 billion is the sum of all desktop and mobile visits to Google in a month in 2024.
• Having a citation on 31-40 other good platforms can increase average visibility by 55-58%
• Google occupies 89.33% of the market share, while Bing only holds 4.15%.
• Google runs around 99000 search queries. This adds up to 8.5 billion searches per day in every part of the world. 
• More than 20% of Google App searches are done using voice search.
• Google Assistant is now used by over 500 million users every month.
• Google takes an average of 36 seconds to process and answer a search query.
• Google is now 33% more likely to rewrite title tag.
• Google shows meta descriptions in search engines only 37.22% of the time. 
• 40.35% of search results are based on fat-head keywords, followed by 34.38% for long-tail keywords. 
• Live chat usage increased by 85% during the pandemic, resulting in a 200% increase in live-chat-driven sales.
• The top result on Google gets an average CTR of 27.6% and is 10 times more likely to receive a click than the 10th position.
• URLs that contain terms similar to a keyword have a 45% higher click-through rate compared to URLs that don’t contain a keyword
• 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google.
• On average, organic search produces 33% of overall website traffic for these seven key industries: professional services, technology, education, healthcare, travel & hospitality, retail, and finance.
• Google's August 2024 core update resulted in 44% of websites' dropping in rankings and traffic. Only 27% of sites reported improved traffic and rankings, while 29% said they saw no changes.

AI and SEO statistics

Using AI in SEO strategies has reshaped how businesses optimize for search engines. The numbers tell a compelling story: see for yourself! 

• The top three AI use cases in SEO include article writing, copywriting, and keyword research.
• 65% of businesses generate better SEO results thanks to AI.
• 69% of marketers use ChatGPT, making it the most popular AI tool, followed by Midjourney and Jasper.
• 86% of SEO professionals have integrated AI into their strategy.
• 93% review their AI-generated content before publishing it.
• 83% of respondents at companies with 200+ employees reported improved SEO performance since incorporating AI.
• 82% of enterprise SEOs plan to invest more in AI for SEO in the future.
• 93% of local marketers have experimented with generative AI tools.
• Only 4.09% of SEO specialists believe that generative AI can’t enhance SEO in any way.
• Only 14.03% of users trust keyword data from AI tools.

Local SEO statistics

Local SEO is an SEO strategy that allows businesses to gain visibility in local search results on Google. If your company has a physical store, shop, or showroom, you can benefit from local SEO by optimizing your business information. Check out the following statistics to understand why local SEO is essential to your business.

• 98% of consumers use the internet to find information about local businesses.
• Local and organic searches together make up 69% of overall digital traffic. 
• 87% of consumers used Google to evaluate their local business.
• According to Google, people using them for local search queries visit 1.5 billion locations every month. That is 32.8% of all internet users visiting a local business. 
• 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. 
• Organic search share expands to 53.3% of traffic and remains the dominant medium of trackable search traffic and the largest digital channel. 
• In B2C, combined search averages about 76% of organic traffic.
• SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic and paid and unpaid social media. 
• 60% of marketers say that inbound (SEO, blog, content) is the highest quality source of marketing leads. 
• The top three local SEO services offered are GBP management, content creation, and on-site optimization.
• 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a physical place within 24 hours, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase.

SEO ROI statistics

The return on investment (ROI) of search engine optimization campaigns depends on your industry. SEO is a long-term strategy that can produce significant results when done right and consistently. Here are a few statistics to help us evaluate the long-term impact of SEO based on the industry.

Here are some SEO statistics that impact your ROI directly.   

Source: FirstPageSage

Video SEO statistics

Video SEO involves optimizing your videos to be indexed and ranked on SERP for relevant keywords and phrases. Video marketing is becoming highly popular among businesses. Here are a few statistics to prove it.

• The video viewer base is constantly increasing, and businesses have increased their video investments from 61% in 2016 to 86% in 2022, which further increased to 90% in 2024.
• 91% of companies use videos in their marketing strategies. 
• On average, people watch 17 hours worth of video content in a week.
• 65% of users identify YouTube as their preferred channel for viewing video content.
• 73% of people would rather watch a video to learn about a product or service than read about it in text
• 30% of marketers lack the time to create video content, whereas 18% don’t
  know where to start, and 10% can't convince key stakeholders. 
• 41% of marketers used video as a marketing tool for the first time in 2022.
• 89% of video marketers say video games give a good ROI, followed by 83% of video marketers who use it for lead generation, and 87% who say it increases organic traffic.
• By the end of the year, YouTube had averaging over 20 million active users daily and hosted around 2 million videos on its websites every day. 
• Visitors spend an average of 19 minutes on YouTube
• 99% of YouTube users are also active on other social media platforms.
• 66% of video marketers created live-action videos in 2022, 57% created
  screen-recorded videos, and 55% created animated videos.
• 42% of video marketers say they spend between $0 and $500 on an average video.
• YouTube is most popular in India, followed by the US and Indonesia.
• The possibility of ranking on the first page increases by 53x by including a video.

Mobile SEO statistics

Mobile SEO includes optimizing your website for smartphone and tablet users. This includes making your site resources accessible to search engine crawlers. People today have twice as many interactions with brands on mobile devices than anywhere else.

Mobile has taken over as the preferred tool for online searches. Users prefer the efficiency that mobile search brings. Google even stated that pages that are not optimized for smartphones don't rank in mobile search. With this in mind, mobile optimization must remain a top priority for marketing and web development teams.

• In terms of overall global search engine market share, smartphones account for 59.77% of the market share, followed by tablets at 2.27%.
• Location-based services account for 30% of all mobile searches. 
• Out of 4.3 billion smartphone users, over 1.16 billion use voice technology weekly.
• 98% of all video views come from mobile devices. 
• 57% of mobile searches leave the SERP without clicking on an organic or paid result.
• By 2025, 72.6% of internet users, or nearly 3.7 billion people, will access the web solely via smartphones.

SEO keywords statistics

SEO keywords are an integral factor that determines a page’s SERP ranking. Before writing content, marketing teams should research keywords to determine what online users frequently search for. 

Once marketing teams figure out which keywords to focus on, they can develop a list of keywords or questions to answer on their webpage and create valuable content for users. Users can also take advantage of SEO keyword tracking software and great keyword research tools to help boost their website’s organic traffic.

• 88.2% of all search queries contain three or fewer keywords in the US.
• Over 29% of keywords with over 10K+ monthly traffic also contain three or less than three keywords. 
• 13.53% of search queries with ten searches or fewer per month consist of only one or two words
• 8.6% of clicks only go to the featured snippet section of the search engine result page.
• 8% of searches are questions.
• 30.9% of featured snippets rank in position one. 
• About 95% of keywords have a volume of 10 or less searches per month.

Voice search statistics

Voice search uses speech recognition to search the web. Businesses can optimize for question-based search queries, long-tail keywords, and conversational content retrieved as results of a particular voice search. The following statistics highlight the current trends in voice search:

• 62% of Americans over 18 use a voice assistant through a device.
• Featured snippets provide 40.7% of all voice search responses.
• 9th grade is the average reading level of a voice search result.
• 29 words are the typical voice search result in length.
• Websites with strong link authority tend to rank well in voice search. In fact, the average domain rating for a Google Home result is 76.8.
• More than 80% of the total voice search answers on Google Assistant are from top three search results. 
• Voice search is considered the most emerging SEO factor by 22.8% of SEO professionals.
• More than 40% of users reported purchasing a product after listening to its voice advertisement.

Backlink statistics

You get a backlink when another website links to your web page. To increase your domain authority (DA) and website traffic, a significant part of your SEO strategy should be centered around ways to get more backlinks.

• Around 67.5% of SEO experts believe backlinks impact search engine rankings. 
• 46.5% of SEO professionals spend $5,000-$10,000 monthly on link building.
• Backlinko’s Brian Dean found that sending “Feeler” emails (outreach where you don’t ask for a backlink) increased conversions by over 40%.
• 54% of SEO professionals think nofollow links improve authority and/or rankings.
• 73.6% of domains have reciprocal links, meaning that some of the sites they link to also link to them. 
• 30% of backlink experts say organic traffic is the best way to measure the quality of a link.
• The top Google result (#1) has 3.8 times more backlinks than those below (#2-#10).
• 40.7% of marketers say content marketing provides the strongest passive link-building results.
• As the number of backlinks increases, so does the organic traffic from Google.
• 85% of marketers think link-building has a big impact on brand authority.
• 43.7% of the top-ranking pages have some reciprocal links.
• 33% say authority metrics are the best way to measure backlink quality.

The SEO-lution to your problems

Rome wasn’t built in a day; neither was SEO. You must be patient with your SEO efforts and optimize consistently before expecting results. SEO helps you in the long term by allowing you to establish thought leadership and rank higher on SERPs, which, in turn, drive substantial traffic to your website. 

Learn how to conduct an effective SEO audit to optimize your website for maximum traffic, rankings, and authority.