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173 Important SEO Statistics You Should Know for 2025

SEO never stops evolving, but some things stay critical: visibility, authority, and real connections between content and users.

To help you stay on top of what matters in 2025, we gathered the most important, verified SEO statistics from trusted sources like Ahrefs, Backlinko, and others.

From the rising impact of voice search to the steady power of backlinks, these numbers tell the real story of how search works today — and where it’s headed.

Let’s check the latest facts every SEO professional needs to know.

AI SEO Statistics

AI isn’t replacing search — it’s changing how it works. Here’s how AI is reshaping SEO, content, and search behavior in 2025:

Around 75% of marketers are now actively using AI tools for SEO, content creation, and other work tasks. (SeoProfy)
69% of marketers use ChatGPT for work tasks. (Authority Hacker)
65.8% of marketers believe AI-generated content is as good as (or better than) human writing. (Authority Hacker)
85.1% of marketers are already using AI tools for article writing. (Authority Hacker)
44.2% of surveyed SEO professionals use AI tools in their link-building efforts. (Editorial.Link)
AI is helping with research and prospecting in link building, but real conversations are still key for landing top-quality links.
Only about 3% of top content on Google is heavily AI-generated. (OrbitMediaStudios)
Organic results dominate: They beat ads by a landslide in CTR — 39.8% vs. just 2.1%. (Matomo)
99% of people using AI platforms like ChatGPT still rely on search engines too. ( Exploding Topics)
Early in 2025, AI Overviews appeared for about 8.7% of all keywords — but they showed up in 30% of overall search results, especially for problem-solving queries.
75.7% of marketers are now actively using AI tools to help with SEO tasks. (SeoProfy)
67% of small businesses say they’re leveraging AI to improve content and boost SEO performance.(SEMRUSH)
75% of marketers report that AI tools help automate manual SEO work like optimizing meta-tags.(SeoProfy)
73% of consumers say they trust content generated by AI.(SeoProfy)
In AI-driven searches like ChatGPT, 58% of results come from business websites, 27% from business mentions, and 15% from directories.(Brightlocal)
88% of multi-location marketers are already using AI tools in their work.(Brightlocal).
Among top-performing brands, 36% are heavily using AI in their marketing efforts — much higher compared to 13% of average brands.(Brightlocal)
59% of agency marketers plan to sharpen their skills in AI and machine learning by 2025.(Brightlocal)
32% of U.S. adults believe AI will help them find better local businesses compared to traditional search methods. (Brightlocal)
68% of SEO experts believe link building will become even more important over the next two years, despite the rise of AI.
62% of organizations say being cited in AI-generated search results is very important for brand visibility.
Only 11% of companies have a repeatable method to consistently appear in AI-generated outputs.(BuzzStream)
Nearly 85% of Google’s AI Overviews link back to sites that are already in the top 10 organic results.(BuzzStream)

SEO and Search Engine Usage Statistics

Search is still where most online journeys begin — and these fresh stats show just how much it still matters:

In 2025, major SEO shifts are expected to come from Generative AI, Google’s E-E-A-T updates, and the growing number of zero-click searches.
68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, showing just how powerful search still is. (AIOSEO)
Google drives over 63% of U.S. web traffic referrals, and globally, Google Search, Images, and Maps combined account for 92.96% of traffic.
SEO generates 1,000% more traffic than organic social media platforms.
60% of marketers name SEO and inbound tactics as their highest-quality lead sources.
SEO leads have a close rate of 14.6%, far outperforming traditional marketing methods.(Intergrowth)
15% of all daily Google searches are brand-new, never-before-seen queries.(Ahrefs)
Organic search still rules: 50% of marketers say it gives the best return on investment compared to other channels.
Content length matters: Pages on Google’s first page average around 1,447 words.(Intergrowth)
Older content wins: Around 60% of pages ranking in Google’s top 10 are three years old or older.(Ahrefs)
Organic search drives about 58% of all web traffic across the globe.
High-quality content, a strong page experience, and solid backlinks are still the three most important ranking factors, according to SEO experts.
15% of Google searches are completely new — terms the search engine has never seen before.(Google)
Moving up just one position on Google’s first page can bump your click-through rate by 32.3%.(Backlinko)
Organic search results earn 94% of all clicks on Google, while paid ads get just a tiny slice.(AIOSEO)
Organic search drives 29% of total web traffic, making it the second biggest source after direct visits.(AIOSEO)

SEO Professionals Statistics

SEO is a full-blown industry with serious money, career growth, and constant change. Here’s what the latest numbers show:

78.2% of SEOs work on monthly retainers for at least part of their client services.(Ahrefs)
Most monthly SEO retainers land between $500 and $1,000.
Self-employed SEOs earn about $60,232 annually on average, higher than those working at agencies or in-house roles.
Most senior SEO roles, like Heads of SEO or SEO Directors, typically come with 10+ years of experience behind them.
SEO specialists in the U.S. now earn an average annual salary of $70,300 — about $5,000 more than last year.
Hourly SEO rates usually range from $75 to $150, depending on expertise and project complexity.
The global SEO industry is projected to hit $146.96 billion by the end of 2025.
63% of SEO professionals say the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews has positively influenced their traffic, rankings, or visibility.(AIOSEO)

Voice Search Insights Statistics

With more devices listening than ever before, voice search has become a huge part of how people explore the internet. Let’s check out some fresh insights:

18% of mobile local searches lead to a purchase within 24 hours, compared to just 7% for non-local searches.(Ahrefs)
36% of Americans own a smart speaker, and 58% of people aged 25–34 use voice search every day.(Ahrefs)
67% of consumers say they’re very likely to use voice search when looking for information.(UpCity)
Voice answers come fast: A typical voice search result loads in about 4.6 seconds.
Featured Snippets power voice: Around 40.7% of voice answers pull directly from Featured Snippets.(AIOSEO)
Over 70% of voice answers come from HTTPS-secured pages, showing that Google favors secure sites for voice search results.
Brevity wins: The average voice search answer clocks in at just 29 words.
The pages that voice search pulls from aren’t short — they average about 2,312 words.
Top-ranking pages dominate voice too: About 75% of voice answers come from pages already ranking in the top 3 on desktop.(Backlinko)
When people use voice search on mobile, they’re three times more likely to be asking about local spots compared to when they type.
Over 1 billion voice searches happen globally every month.
About 20% of people worldwide use voice search, and 27% use it regularly on mobile.(DemandSage)
41% of U.S. adults say they use voice search daily, and about 24% use it multiple times a day.(Exploding Topics)
Only 13% of marketers are currently optimizing for voice search, despite its growth.(Hubspot)
42% of Americans use voice assistants regularly to search for or research information online.(VixenLabs)
Siri remains the leading voice assistant in the U.S., used by 22% of users.(VixenLabs)
Voice search results load about 52% faster compared to traditional search results.(DemandSage)
There are now about 8.4 billion voice assistants in use, double the number from just a year earlier.
71% of internet users say they prefer using voice search over typing, especially for quick tasks like checking the weather.(AIOSEO)
People on mobile devices are three times more likely to talk to their search assistant than those on desktops.
Roughly half of mobile users perform a voice search every day.

Video SEO Statistics

Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or video on landing pages – video content is now leading the way online. Here’s what the stats are showing in 2025:

82% of people say videos convinced them to buy a product or service.
Longer videos perform better: YouTube videos appearing on the first page typically run about 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
About 68.2% of YouTube’s top-ranking videos are in HD, making clear, high-quality visuals more important than ever.(Backlinko)
Videos with more likes, comments, and shares tend to rank better on YouTube.
Video drives engagement: Over half of people (51%) say they’re more likely to share a video than any other content format.(Wyzowl)
YouTube has 2.5 billion viewers as of 2024, making it the second-largest search engine after Google.
Video content now makes up 82% of all internet traffic.
Short-form videos are now the top pick for marketers looking to grab attention fast.
Video content is 53 times more likely to achieve organic ranking compared to plain text pages.
89% of businesses now include video content as part of their marketing strategies.(Wyzowl)
78% of companies plan to produce even more videos in the coming year.(Wistia)
41% of marketers say video helps customers better understand their products.(HubSpot)
Short-form videos deliver the best return on investment among all types of video content.
YouTube now hosts more than 14.8 billion videos globally.(SeoProfy)
Pages with video thumbnails in search results get about 157% more organic traffic.(AIOSEO)
Video pages achieve a 41% higher click-through rate compared to plain-text pages.

Link Building Statistics

Link building has just gotten a lot tougher (and more expensive). These fresh stats show where things stand in 2025:

92% of SEO pros believe their competitors are buying backlinks.
83.2% of specialists say it usually takes at least two weeks to notice any real impact from link building.
Digital PR is seen as the top link-building tactic by 67.3% of experts, ahead of guest posting (38.9%) and linkable assets (36.3%).
More than half (53.9%) of link builders spend over $300 to acquire a high-quality link.
69% of SEO experts trust Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) the most when assessing domain authority.
84.6% of SEO specialists say relevance matters most when judging backlink quality, with domain authority and site traffic close behind at 68.3%.
69% of SEO professionals report they don’t use Google’s disavow tool.
47.8% of SEO pros believe link building is the hardest part of the entire SEO process.
74.3% of specialists say Ahrefs offers the most complete backlink database.
46.9% of link builders actively seek out nofollow links to maintain a balanced backlink profile.
71.1% of SEO experts believe strong, well-crafted content alone can rank a site, without heavy link building, especially in lower-competition niches.
42.5% of specialists notice link-building results within 2 to 4 weeks, while another 37.2% say it can take up to six weeks.
Only 7.1% of businesses allocate more than half of their SEO budgets specifically to link building.
Email remains the primary channel for link building, favored by 45.1% of experts.
On average, it takes about 3.1 months to see the ranking effects of a new backlink.
The number of referring domains remains tightly connected to higher search traffic.
Using social media during link building can result in 22% more links compared to outreach alone.
66% of all web pages have no backlinks at all.
Top-ranking pages typically gain 5%–14.5% more dofollow backlinks month over month.
Websites that actively blog get about 97% more inbound links compared to those that don’t.
80% of SEO professionals still view link-building as a key strategy, and 78% report seeing satisfying returns.
61% of companies manage link building entirely in-house, while agencies and freelancers still have their place.
66% of organizations struggle with selecting the right backlink tactics, showing that strategy gaps are still common.
Only 29% of brands believe their current link-building efforts are fully successful.
68% of link builders mainly focus on building links to blog posts, while only 41% prioritize product pages.
Getting budget isn’t easy: Only 29% of marketers say it’s straightforward to secure link-building funding.
Despite challenges, 56% expect their link-building budgets to grow in 2025.
Only 40% of companies believe their link-building reports clearly demonstrate value.
59% of brands measure link-building success based on improvements in organic visibility, but just 28% link it directly to revenue growth.
Most brands (68%) invest in link building mainly to boost rankings and drive more organic traffic.
70% of link builders stay sharp by reading blogs and newsletters to keep up with the fast-changing SEO landscape.
Guest posting remains the most commonly used link-building method, though it’s not always the most effective option.
The average cost of a guest post is around $220, based on a study of nearly 900 websites.
Securing a high-quality guest post placement typically costs around $609 per article.
Purchasing a link insertion into existing content averages about $141, although site quality can vary widely.
Top-tier backlinks from major media sites often cost over $1,000 — and can sometimes exceed $2,000 per link.
Most in-house SEO teams manage link-building budgets ranging between $5,000 and $12,500 per month.
In many link-building campaigns, securing between 1 and 9 links is considered a successful outcome.
About 66.5% of backlinks created over the past nine years are no longer active, mainly due to pages being removed or redirected.

Statistics Source: Editorial.Link

SEO Ranking Statistics

If you think landing on Google’s first page is hard, you’re right. These stats break down why ranking is still a massive challenge:

96.55% of web pages never get any organic traffic from Google.(Ahrefs)
Only 5.7% of newly published pages manage to land in Google’s top 10 search results within a year.
The average top-ranking page is more than two years old.
About 33.4% of the time, Google rewrites page titles — often grabbing text straight from the H1 heading.(Ahrefs)
About 25% of top-ranking pages don’t even have a meta description.
Google changes meta descriptions roughly 62.78% of the time, especially on pages targeting long-tail keywords.(Ahrefs)
Top 10 ranking pages typically rank for about 1,000 other related keywords too.
43.7% of top-ranking pages are engaged in reciprocal linking.(Ahrefs)
Having more domains linking to your page remains one of the biggest drivers of higher rankings.
Featured snippets earn a 42.9% click-through rate, making them the top attention-grabber on SERPs.(AIOSEO)
Jumping from position #2 to #1 on Google can boost your clicks by 74.5%.(AIOSEO)
Rich search results, like those with images or videos, capture 58% of clicks, compared to 41% for standard listings.(AIOSEO)
Only 0.78% of users bother clicking anything on Google’s second page of results.(AIOSEO)

Keywords Statistics

If you’re betting everything on the most popular keywords, you might want to rethink it — the real action happens with the niche, specific ones:

Almost 95% of all keywords get fewer than 10 searches a month, showing just how rare high-volume terms really are.
The top five search results pull in about 69.1% of all clicks.(Up Inc.)
Around 80–88% of U.S. search queries are just one to three words long.
About 8% of search queries are phrased as questions.(Moz)
Long-tail keywords now drive about 70% of total search traffic.(Embryo Agency)
Over half of Google searches (52.65%) are informational.(SparkToro / Datos)
More than 44% of all Google searches are for specific brands.(SparkToro)
Longer search queries, between 10–15 words, tend to earn 1.76 times more clicks compared to single-word queries.(Backlinko)
URLs with keywords included see a 45% higher click-through rate.(AIOSEO)
Only 0.69% of all search queries show strong buying intent (transactional searches).(SparkToro)
Only 0.0008% of keywords pull in over 100,000 searches a month, making truly high-volume terms incredibly rare.(Ahrefs)
34.71% of all Google searches contain four words or more.(AIOSEO)
Google rewrites about 57% of meta titles when they’re too long for SERP displays.(Ahrefs)
25.02% of top-ranking pages are missing a meta description entirely.(Ahrefs)
Blogs that focus on transactional keywords can see up to a return on investment.

E-commerce SEO Statistics

More shopping is happening online than ever before, and SEO is leading the way. Let’s check out what the numbers say:

By 2027, e-commerce will represent 41% of all retail sales worldwide (nearly 130% growth compared to 2017).(Boston Consulting Group)
Globally, smartphones account for 77% of retail site visits and 68% of online purchases.(Statista)
40% of online shoppers prefer completing the full buying journey on their smartphones.(Status Labs)
Organic SEO traffic contributed to 23.6% of all eCommerce orders.(Reboot)
Amazon still leads the pack as the top online marketplace for traffic.

Technical SEO Statistics

Good content won’t matter if your site is slow, broken, or messy. These technical stats show where most sites are still falling short:

Only about a third of websites meet Google’s Core Web Vitals benchmarks for speed and user experience.
More than 67% of websites using Hreflang have configuration issues.
95.2% of websites have redirect issues with 3XX status codes.(Ahrefs)
Around 80% of websites are missing proper alt text on their images, hurting both SEO and accessibility.
More than 66% of backlinks online are now broken.(Ahrefs)
In 2025, Google rewrote 76% of page titles displayed in search results, up sharply from 61% in 2022.(John McAlpin study)
87.7% of websites now use HTTPS for security.(W3Techs)
23% of websites still don’t implement structured data.
Slow-loading websites are the #1 reason users leave a page, according to 88.5% of surveyed participants.(GoodFirms)
The average page load time is about 2.5 seconds on desktop and 8.6 seconds on mobile.
Google rewrites more than 60% of meta titles and descriptions that show up in search results.(SearchEngineJournal)

SEO Costs & Hiring Statistics

The typical hourly rate for SEO services falls between $25 and $199, with $150 being the most common rate.(SeoProfy)
Average SEO project costs range from $2,501 to $5,000.(Ahrefs)
The average salary for SEO specialists is around $58,288 per year.(Ahrefs)
SEO experts with over 10 years of experience often charge up to $3,000 monthly for their services.(SeoProfy)

SEO ROI Statistics

SEO generates about an 8x return on investment, while PPC campaigns yield about a 4x return.(NP Digital)
Businesses leveraging SEO can cut ad spending by up to 400% without losing their target audience.(Lyfe Marketing)
SEO leads close at a rate of 14.6%, compared to just 1.7% for outbound sales leads.(Intergrowth)

Final Thoughts

SEO in 2025 is heavily influenced by AI and voice search, but core strategies—high-quality content, strong backlinks, and technical optimization—remain essential for rankings. Marketers must adapt to trends like video SEO and Featured Snippets while maintaining a user-focused approach. Despite changes, organic search still drives the majority of web traffic and delivers the best ROI.