120 SEO Statistics 2024 — New Data & Trends

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the most crucial factor in digital marketing. 

A well-executed SEO campaign can deliver impressive results, with businesses seeing an average return on investment (ROI) of 748%. This highlights SEO’s impact on long-term growth and profitability. 

As a result, 82.5% of marketers are planning to increase their investments in SEO in 2024. 

This article explores the role of SEO in driving organic traffic, improving visibility, and generating leads and sales. 

Top SEO Statistics 2024: Key Takeaway

• A significant 68% of all online activities start with a search engine. (Brightedge)
• More than 90% of global searches are conducted on Google. (Forbes)
• Google’s algorithm evaluates more than 200 factors to rank websites in search results. (Backlinko)
• Over 53% of all search results are organic, highlighting the importance of non-paid listings in driving website visibility and traffic. (Ahref)
• The first page of search results captures more than 99% of all clicks. (Semrush)
• 92.1% of people access the internet through a mobile phone, making mobile optimization crucial.
• 40% of users will abandon your website if it takes more than three seconds to load.

Google Search Engine Statistics

Google has 90.48% of the global search engine market. Almost all search engine SEO campaigns are crafted keeping Google in mind. In this section, I will take you through some of Google’s top statistics that will help you rank your website on Google’s first page.

• As of 2024, over 5.45 billion internet users worldwide use Google.
• An internet user searches on Google 3 to 4 times a day.
• 75% of people will never go past the first page of Google.
• Google processes 8.2 billion searches every day, which is equivalent to 99,000 searches every second.
• More than 1 billion questions have been asked via Google Lens to date.
• 63% of Google’s organic search traffic in the U.S.A. is generated via mobile devices.
• Facebook and YouTube are the two most searched terms on Google.
• According to Andrey Lipattsev (Ex Search Quality Senior Strategist of Google), Content, Backlinks, and Rank Brain are the top three factors that rank a page on Google.

Keywords Statistics

1. 34.71% of Google search queries contain four or more words.
2. For ranking web pages, Google’s search algorithm considers around 200 ranking factors. Content’s relevancy and quality are a couple of the top parameters that are considered.
3. A meta description is missing on 25.02% of the top-ranking pages.
4. 97% of webpages appearing on the #1 page of Google have at least 1 image on them.
5. Over 29% of search terms with over 10,000 monthly searches have three or more words.
6. The first five organic Search Engine Result Page results account for over 67% of total clicks.
7. Approximately 8% of queries are framed as a question.
8. Approximately 60% of web pages on Google that rank on the first page are 3 or more years old.
9. 40% of users will abandon your website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
10. Updating a blog or article on your website can lead to as much as 146% growth in search traffic.
11. The #1 organic result on Google has around 1400-1500 words in it on average.
12. 92% of keywords have a search volume of fewer than 10 searches per month. Semrush is a great tool to sort and track important keywords for your projects.

Sources: Semrush, Ahrefs, Baclinko, Demandsage, Think With Google, Zero Web Limit, SEO Tribunal, 99signals.

Technical SEO Statistics

13. Only 33% of websites meet the standards set by Google’s Core Web Vitals, which means most sites still struggle to provide the optimal performance and user experience needed to rank well. 
14. Approximately 25% of businesses prioritize mobile optimization as a key component of their technical SEO strategies.
15. Many websites struggle with the proper use of H1 tags, with 59.5% missing H1 tags altogether, while 51.3% have multiple H1 tags, which can confuse search engines and hinder SEO performance.
16. Just 11.9% of web pages meet at least one of Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. Of those, an impressive 93% successfully met all three, indicating a strong commitment to optimizing the user experience for those pages that focus on Core Web Vitals.

Source: Ahref.

Backlink SEO Statistics

17. High-quality link building makes for 30% of your entire page score on Google.
18. A single link from a high-quality domain will be valued more than several links from low-quality domains.
19. Over 65% of web pages have no backlinks linking to them.
20. Long-form content receives 77.2% more backlinks than short-form content.
21. Businesses with blogs obtain 97% more backlinks to their website. 
22. With 404 billion web pages in its index. Ahrefs is the most powerful backlink-building tool in the market. Compared to Semrush, Ahrefs has better backlinks capability.
23. The number of URLs connecting to a page was the factor with the highest association with Google ranks. 
24. Every month, the top-ranking page in SERP receives an additional 5% to 15% additional do-follow backlinks from new domains.
25. The average cost of a backlink from a low-authority website is $150, whereas a backlink from a website with higher domain authority costs $1,000.

Voice Search Statistics

26. Voice search on mobile devices is used by 27% of the global population.
27. Structured data helps voice assistants understand your content, making you more discoverable in the 50% of searches expected to be voice-based by 2024.
28. 39.4% of internet users in the U.S.A. use a voice assistant at least once every month.
29. Voice searches account for 20% of all online searches.
30. Voice search was utilized by 58% of consumers to find local company information.
31. According to BacklinkO, a featured snippet is responsible for 40.7% of all voice search replies.
32. 70.4% of voice search results come from HTTP websites.
33. Voice search is used by 40% of adults on a daily basis.
34. A healthy backlink profile boosts a website’s ranking in voice search.
35. Each month, 1 billion voice searches are conducted.
36. One in every four people aged 16 to 24 utilizes mobile voice search.
37. By 2025, 75% of US families will own a smart speaker.
38. Alexa is the most popular virtual assistant in the United States, accounting for over 38% of the market.
39. The number of voice assistants will reach 8 billion by 2023.
40. Amazon has the biggest share of smart speakers in the U.S.A., with 66%.

41. After conducting a voice search, 28% of people call the company.
42. 51% of people use voice search to find restaurants.
43. A Geomarketing survey revealed that 65% of Google Home and Amazon Echo owners do not want to return to keyboard searches.
44. The typical result page of the Google Voice search has 2,312 words.
45. A quarter of people aged 16-24 use voice search on their smartphone
46. Smart speakers are most popular among people aged 26 to 35.
47. There are Nearly 91 million smart speakers in the US. the number is estimated to grow to 95 million in 2023.

Sources: Backlinko, FirstSiteGuide, SEO clarity, Gartner, 99firms, social media today, Statista, Think With Google, Hubspot, Semrush.

Local SEO Statistics

48. The monthly number of Google local searches is 97 billion. That’s 37k local searches each second.
49. Almost one-third of all mobile searches are related to location.
50. 28% of searches with local intent result in a purchase. 
51. 72% of Google searchers went to a store within 8 kilometers of where they were looking.
52. 76% of consumers who look for anything local on their smartphone visit the shop within one day.
53. After Googling, 78% of people want to shop locally. 
54. For 92% of web searches that include a city and business category, a Yelp page appears in the top 5 results.
55. A whopping 56% of local businesses have yet to claim their business on the Google My Business listing. 
56. In 2020, “Near Me” searches climbed over 130%.
57. Over 50% of all “Near Me” searches lead to offline conversions.
58. Approximately 45% of customers globally will make a purchase online and subsequently pick up the item in-store.
59. Local search intent is present in 46% of Google queries.

Sources: Statista, Hubspot, Semrush, Ahrefs, Webfx, Backlino, Search Engine Roundtable, Google.

Mobile SEO Statistics

60. Mobile devices account for roughly 55% of global website traffic.
61. 80% of top-ranked websites are optimized for mobile phones.
62. Mobile will surpass desktop in internet sales by 2023.
63. In terms of overall search engine market share globally, smartphones account for 59.77%, with tablets accounting for 2.27% (a total of 59.77% for mobile devices). Desktops account for 37.96%.
64. Location-based searches account for 30% of all mobile searches.
65. 20% of marketing email campaigns are not mobile-optimized.
66. When searching on mobile, 51% of smartphone users discovered a new company or product.
67. Over 30% of all mobile searches are conducted prior to entering a store.
68. When in a store, 43% of users will conduct an internet search on their mobile phones.
69. 69% of mobile phone users believe they are much more likely to purchase from a website that answers their questions quickly.
70. Every day, 87% of mobile phone users utilize a search engine. 
71. 90% of smartphone users are unsure about which brand to purchase.
72. 1/3rd of email clicks are attributed to a mobile device.
73. The first organic listing on mobile devices generates 27.7% of clicks, compared to 19.3% on desktops. 
74. Voice searches currently account for 20% of all mobile phone queries.
75. The second most popular method employed by email marketers to improve their performance is optimizing emails for mobile phones.
76. 57% of users will not suggest a company with a badly optimized mobile website.

Read our take on the best SEO tools in the market.

Sources: Statista, Terakeet, Think With Google, Backlinko, Hubspot, WordStream, Hitwise, SEO clarity, Search Engine Land, 99 firms.

Website Statistics

77. There are 1.11 billion websites in the world, but a staggering 82% of them are inactive.
78. 3 new websites are created every second.
79. 29% of all business takes place online, hence 71% of businesses now have a website.
80. The average rate of conversion for websites is 3.68%. 
81. There are 20 million e-commerce websites in the world. Shopify accounts for 4.8 million E-commerce websites.
82. It only takes 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion of your website. First impressions of a website are 94% design-related
83. 43% of small business owners are looking to invest in their website’s performance in 2024.
84. 88% of online users won’t return to a site after a bad experience.
85. The average bounce rate of a website is between 41% and 55%.
86. The majority of users look at the left corner of a website first. Studies further reveal that viewers spend 80% of their time looking at the left half of web pages.
87. 85% of customers consider a seamless website experience across all devices to be very important.
88. 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized website experiences

Source: Siteefy, Ibisworld, BuiltWith, TandFonline, Forbes, CXL.

Video SEO Statistics

89. Videos appear in 62% of Google’s worldwide searches.
90. According to 49% of marketers, employing video in their digital marketing campaign leads to faster revenue growth.
91. Including a video on the landing page enhances the chances of ranking on Google’s #1 page by 53%.
92. Blogs featuring videos receive 3x the number of inbound links compared to simple text posts.
93. In the United States of America, 85% of all internet users engage with video material at least once a month and 86% of customers say they want to see more videos from the businesses they support. 
94. Posts containing videos receive more backlinks and receive a 157% increase in traffic.
95. According to 51% of marketers surveyed on WordStream, videos are the best sort of content for ROI.
96. Every day, people watch over 1 billion hours of video content on YouTube.
97. 73% of consumers prefer short-form videos to search for products or services.
98. Mobile devices account for 75% of all video plays globally.
99. 2 billion people interact with Instagram’s reel feature every month.
100. Watching a brand’s feedback video impacted 77% of people’s purchasing decisions.
101. After seeing promotional videos on social media, 64% of customers completed a purchase.
102. YouTube’s first-page videos have an average length of 15 minutes.

Sources: Forrester Research, BacklinkO, eMarketer, Charitable, WordStream, Insivia, Search Engine People, PR Newswire.

Challenges In SEO

103. SEO professionals face a number of challenges in their mission to rank websites high in search engine results pages (SERPs). Statista carried out a survey of 3,623 SEO professionals globally to find out that 14.9% of them see “lack of resources” as their biggest problem.

Here is a table showing the top most challenges faced by SEO Professionals globally:

We at Demandsage also deal with SEO every day. We continuously refine our website’s architecture for seamless crawling and implement structured data for enhanced visibility. However, we do encounter challenges such as evolving search engine algorithms and increasing competition, compelling us to stay agile in our tactics.

Here are some challenges that we face at Demandsage while doing SEO:

• Finding the right anchor texts for internal linking.
• Keeping up with the ever-changing Google algorithm.

Statistics Associated With Use Of Artificial Intelligence In AI

AI has made it to our lives in different ways to make things easier. The most common example can be the usage of voice assistants like Google Assistant and Siri in our day-to-day activities. Even using Grammarly for proofreading your content is a very common example of AI in SEO.

AI for SEO works to increase performance and, to some extent, make large-scale and complex data analysis accessible to everyone. Many people are already using ChatGPT and Google Bard for SEO in the current times.

Here is a list of some amazing facts about AI in the SEO Sector!

104. 58% of marketers plan to use AI for content and SEO in 2024.
105. 40% of marketers witnessed a 6-10% increase in revenue after implementing AI in their SEO practice.
106. The majority of people are using ChatGPT for SEO.

Here are the top ways in which marketers are using this chatbot:

• Content Generation
• Keyword Research
• Generating emails for acquiring backlinks
• Generating Schema Markup

Google Bard is also being used for improving SEO. Here are the top ways in which marketers are using Google’s own chatbot for SEO.

• Finding Content Gap
• Creating Anchor text variations
• content planning and ideation

107. In a Statista survey, Machine learning and/or AI were voted first by 18.7% of respondents as the leading reasons for a shift in search engine optimization (SEO) in the coming times. 13.9% stated that the deprecation of third-party cookies would be the reason.

Sources: Search Engine Land, LinkedIn, Medium, Meetanshi.

General SEO Statistics

108. Before clicking on any of the results for their original search, 18% of searchers type a new query.
109. Google’s core update in May 2022 led to growth in traffic on websites with AI-generated content.
110. 50% of the users are more likely to click on a product that appears multiple times in SERPs.
111. Blog posts with seven or fewer words in their H1 tag obtain 36% higher organic traffic on average than those with fourteen or more words.
112. Voice search technology will be used weekly by 1.1 billion mobile phone users worldwide in the coming times.
113. Click-Through Rate from Google picture results is 0.21% on average. It’s also important to note that this rate changes greatly with industries.
114. Brand connection increases Click-Through Rates by 2 to 3 times.
115. Similar to Voice Search, Artificial intelligence will play a huge role in SEO.
116. Content in long form and Videos in Short form is the way for the future.
117. A recent study by the digital information world revealed that 2.5 million search terms showed that Google’s “People also ask” feature now shows up for nearly 49% of searches.
118. User Experience is equally important to keep users on your site. Make sure to make it more engaging and intuitive. Don’t forget to make your website mobile responsive.

Sources: Oberlo, Backlinko, Google, Internet Live Stats, StatCounter, Semrush, WordStrea, Search Engine Journal, Stan Ventures, Hubspot.

Did you know? You can handle SEO for top clients by sitting at home.

Future Of SEO — Trends & Insights For 2024

The SEO industry is forecasted to reach a valuation of $99.4 billion by the year 2027: The US market is expected to be the largest, followed by China, with other regions like Europe and Asia also experiencing significant growth.

The demand for skilled SEO professionals will rise, creating new job opportunities in the field.

• E-E-A-T will be important more than ever: (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) will continue to be paramount ranking factors. Invest in building your brand’s credibility through high-quality content, expert contributors, and positive user experiences.
• AI usage will increase in SEO: AI is already integrated heavily into the SEO industry. Expect to see AI-powered tools for keyword research, content optimization, and even competitor analysis becoming increasingly sophisticated. The ability to leverage AI for data-driven decisions and automation will be a key differentiator. Currently, 8 in 10 digital marketers are deploying AI and Machine Learning-enabled solutions for their marketing endeavors.
• Video as the new king of content: Video content is exploding in popularity. Just like image SEO, Video SEO will be the next big thing in 2024. Optimized video titles, descriptions, tags, and transcripts for search engines will make your video pop in searches and help you gain more audience.
• Build your blog as a brand: People are starting blogs left, right, and center. But if you have to stand out among the crowd, you need to create your blog as a brand. How can you do it? Run PRs and personalize your content as much as possible, creating people-first content.
• User experience reigns supreme: Prioritize mobile-first design, fast loading times, and engaging content formats (videos and infographics) to keep users glued to your website. It is estimated that there will be 7.296 billion smartphone users worldwide by 2025. As we said earlier, making mobile-friendly websites should be one of the most important factors in optimizing them for UX

Conclusion: SEO Improves The Visibility Of A Website, Diving More Traffic

With over two-thirds of online experiences initiated through a search engine and Google driving over 90% of global traffic, the significance of SEO is clear. 

Moreover, every dollar spent on SEO brings back an impressive $7.48, which translates to a return that is 7.48 times the initial investment.

Therefore, as businesses tackle the challenges of search algorithms, using the latest SEO statistics can help develop an effective SEO strategy.