SEO Statistics 2024
by Roy Dovaston
Now we're past the midway point of the year, the landscape of SEO continues to evolve, driven by new technologies, changing algorithms, and shifting user behaviours. Understanding the latest SEO statistics is crucial for businesses and marketers looking to stay ahead of the curve.
In this blog post, we'll delve into the most recent data, SEO stats and trends in SEO, covering areas such as mobile and voice search, technical SEO, local SEO, and industry insights.
Whether you're an experienced SEO professional or just starting out, these statistics will help inform your strategies and optimise your SEO efforts for the remainder of the year and beyond.
General SEO Statistics
Search Initiation: 93% of web experiences start with a search engine, highlighting the critical role of search engines in driving organic search traffic to websites.
Organic Traffic: Organic search remains a dominant source of website traffic, accounting for approximately 53.3% of all traffic.
Google Dominance: Google continues to lead the search engine market with a whopping 92% of the global search traffic.
Voice Search
Voice search is a technology that allows users to perform internet searches and interact with digital devices using spoken commands instead of typing. This technology leverages natural language processing (NLP) to understand and interpret users' vocal inputs, delivering voice search results or executing tasks accordingly. Popularised by smart assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, voice search is particularly useful for hands-free interactions, making it convenient for quick searches, setting reminders, playing music, or controlling smart home devices. Its increasing accuracy and integration into various devices have led to widespread adoption.
Interesting Voice SEO Statistics
Voice Search SEO: 40% of adults use voice search daily, and it accounts for 20% of all Google searches in the United States. In the United Kingdom, voice search is gaining significant traction where daily use is around 40% amongst adults, similar to trends seen in the United States.
Local Focus: Mobile voice searches are three times more likely to be local-based compared to text searches.
Smart Speaker Adoption: In the United Kingdom, smart speaker ownership is quite significant. Approximately 38.2% of UK adults own a smart speaker, equating to about 19.7 million adults. Over half of UK households have at least one smart speaker, with nearly 30% of these households owning two, and around 18% owning three or more. Amazon Echo devices dominate the market, accounting for 64.3% of all smart speakers, followed by Google devices at 19.2%. Usage has increased, with two-thirds of owners using their devices daily, particularly for music, news, and various informational queries.
What is Mobile SEO?
Mobile SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising a website to ensure it performs well on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This involves several strategies, including responsive web design, fast loading times, mobile-friendly navigation, and optimising content for mobile readability. With the increasing number of mobile searches, mobile SEO is crucial for improving user experience, increasing engagement, and boosting search engine rankings. It ensures that websites are accessible and functional on smaller screens, which is essential for capturing and retaining mobile users and traffic.
Mobile SEO Statistics
Mobile Traffic: Mobile devices account for roughly 55% of global website traffic.
Google Maps Usage: Over 70% of people using Google Maps are on mobile devices.
Business Visibility: Businesses with complete Google My Business profiles are twice as likely to be considered reputable by consumers, significantly benefiting from Google Maps visibility.
User Engagement: On average, users spend 6.5 minutes per session on Google Maps.
Optimisation Necessity: 80% of top-ranked websites are optimised for mobile devices.
Search Behaviour: 30% of all mobile searches are related to location, and 43% of users conduct internet searches on their mobile phones while in a store.
Video SEO
Video SEO involves the optimisation of video content to improve its visibility and ranking on search engines and video platforms, most commonly YouTube. This includes strategies such as keyword optimisation in titles, descriptions, and tags, creating engaging thumbnails, and using transcripts and closed captions. Additionally, fostering user engagement through likes, comments, and shares can boost video rankings. Video SEO aims to enhance discoverability, drive more traffic, and increase viewer engagement, ultimately contributing to better overall performance of the video content.
Video SEO Statistics
YouTube Popularity: YouTube is the second largest search engine, processing over 3 billion searches per month.
Video Consumption: By end of 2024, online videos are expected to make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic.
Engagement Impact: Videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80%.
Search Ranking: Websites with video content are 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google search results.
User Engagement: Videos that receive more comments, likes, and shares tend to rank higher on YouTube.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to the optimisation of a website's infrastructure to enhance its ability to be crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines. This involves various practices such as improving site speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, implementing structured data, optimising site architecture, and fixing crawl errors. Technical SEO aims to create a solid foundation that facilitates search engines in understanding and accessing a website's content, ultimately leading to better visibility and higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Technical SEO Statistics
Core Web Vitals: Only 33% of websites pass the Core Web Vitals threshold, emphasising the need for technical search engine optimisation.
Page Speed: 72.3% of sites have slow pages, which can negatively impact organic search rankings.
Mobile Optimisation: 72.3% of sites suffer from slow page speeds, which is critical for mobile search ranking.
Alt Attributes: 80.4% of websites are missing alt attributes on images, which can hinder accessibility and SEO.
Redirect Issues: 95.2% of sites have 3XX redirect issues, and 88% have HTTP to HTTPS redirect issues.
Indexing Problems: Over 60% of websites have pages that link to redirects, impacting their indexing and ranking potential.
Local Search Engine Optimisation
Local SEO is the practice of optimising a website to attract more traffic from local searches on search engines for local business. It involves strategies like optimising Google Business Profile listings, building local citations, getting positive customer reviews, and using local keywords in content. Local SEO is essential for businesses that serve specific geographic areas, as it helps them appear in Google search results when users search for services or products near their location. This optimisation ensures higher visibility in local search results, which can lead to increased foot traffic, phone calls, and ultimately, more sales. These local seo statistics show how vital Google search results are and are crucial to all local businesses looking to improve their search results.
Local SEO Statistics
Local Search Importance: 46% of all Google searches are for local businesses or services.
Review Impact: 63.6% of consumers check reviews on Google before visiting a business location.
Conversion Rates: 28% of local searches result in a purchase, showcasing the high conversion potential of local SEO efforts.
Mobile Influence: Nearly one-third of all mobile searches are location-based, local search queries.
Review Impact: 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, emphasizing the importance of managing local reviews.
SEO Industry Statistics
Pricing Models: The most popular monthly retainer for SEO agency services is between £500-£1,000, and the most common hourly rate in the UK is £75 - £125
Experience & Rates: There is a clear positive correlation between experience and rates, with more experienced SEO agencies charging higher fees.
SEO Salary Insights: The average salary for an SEO Executive in the United Kingdom is approximately £27,500 per year. Entry-level positions typically start at around £23,000 per year, while more experienced SEO Executives can earn up to £35,000 annually. These figures reflect a range of salaries based on different sources and regions within the UK
These SEO statistics underscore the importance of focusing on various aspects of SEO, from technical SEO optimisation and local search strategies to adapting for mobile, video and voice search trends. Staying updated with these trends can significantly enhance your SEO strategy and drive better search results in 2024.
