2024 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) statistics: Discover the latest search usage and adoption data to inform your search strategies

Statistics help us turn data into information, allowing us to make informed and rational decisions and that's exactly the purpose of this article. We're huge fans of search engine marketing, both search engine optimization and paid search marketing. But with behavior changing so quickly, it's vital to keep on top of search engine marketing statistics to inform your strategy. We have a wide range of tools and templates for marketers looking to make data-driven marketing decisions. Whether you're looking for channel excellence or marketing strategy advice, we've got resources to support your digital marketing optimization journey. [si_blog_banner_cta]

Search marketing data for 2024 - February update

This summary of search engine marketing statistics is aimed at helping you make better-informed decisions about the running of your search marketing. I'll start by reviewing…

From allowing you to gain a better understanding of your competitors to ensuring that your personal information is kept well away from any prying eyes, there is a whole host of reasons why a VPN can improve your approach to search engine marketing.

As a search engine marketer, it’s safe to say that the internet underpins everything that you do. Whether it’s launching a new social media marketing campaign or performing an overhaul of your SEO strategy, there are many important factors that can determine how well your website ranks on search engines. [si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Successful SEO guide" description="If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality visitors who want to do business with you to your site."/] An increasingly competitive market is a clear marker of just how important it is to perfect your search engine marketing approach. To…

So, what are the different types of featured snippets and what’s their value?

Ever since they first appeared, there are plenty of reputable articles online that explain how to gain featured snippets. However, most of these don't analyze the value of the traffic using real-life examples and give you a true sense of a business case for acquiring these. We’ll take a look at different types of featured snippets and offer some key findings. One simple reason for the rise in importance of featured snippets for digital marketers is the sheer amount of Search Engine Result Page (SERP) "retail" space these take within search results. They dominate the results page and offer greater visibility for a specific query that a potential customer is actively searching for and thereby interested in. Furthermore, in a previous Smart Insights article,…

Examples and best practice advice on how to maximise your digital marketing reach with an integrated PPC and SEO approach.

When it comes to digital marketing, pay per click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO) are arguably two sides of the same coin. However, all too often companies will focus on one at the expense of the other. At ClickThrough Marketing we provide an integrated digital marketing approach. Working with large-scale e-commerce sites, we have learnt the importance of combining PPC and SEO activities to gain greater client and market insight as well as streamline our own internal activities. Here, we look at four ways in which PPC and SEO can work together to deliver better results across the board.

1. Finding SEO opportunities with PPC data

There are many ways in which PPC can support SEO and digital marketers should explore ways…

How can machine learning enhance your digital marketing strategy?

The launch of Google’s new machine learning tool, RankBrain which contributes to search engine results, left many people wondering what impact machine learning would have in the realm of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With the tech industry going crazy for all things Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), machine learning, and chatbots, it’s important to know what the technology is, where it’s going, and what impact it will have on digital marketing as a whole. This article will explain these concepts as well as share some tips on how to adapt to machine learning. [si_guide_block id="87369" title="Download Business Member resource – Machine Learning Briefing" description="Explains how businesses can harness AI with a focus on marketing automation and email marketing."/]

The Growth and Popularity of Machine Learning and AI

Machine learning is, in fact, not new to the tech world. It first appeared as a concept back…

Direct traffic is a great indicator of brand strength - marketers should consider its use as a KPI

How a brand drives its traffic in the online arena is one of the most important things for any digital marketer to know. These traffic drivers can be divided broadly into these 7 segments Direct Mail Referrals Social Organic Search Paid Search Display Ads Each has its own implication on a brand’s online presence however for the scope of this article we will focus on Direct Traffic vs. Various Search metrics. Direct Traffic is when a consumer directly types in the name of a brand’s website in the address bar. Search Traffic is when a consumer is looking for information about a brand and its services/products via a search engine or directly inputting the name of the brand or its product/service, in a search engine. Before we begin it is worth mentioning that a lot of the…

A quick briefing on the 6 new Google services announced at Google I/O 2016

It's important to keep up to date with the new spiel and jargon within #martech and media, to identify new marketing opportunities, or even if it's just to avoid any embarrassment in the office when you're asked for your view on the latest. Google and the other platform providers certainly keep us on our toes, especially their latest raft of announcements. You could say that with their new Alphabet parent, it reminded us of Alphabet soup. Google's annual I/O event certainly had more new platform announcements than most. Here's our look at the 6 new services we counted.

1. Google assistant

This is Google's next step in machine learning and artificial intelligence and is a conversation-based tool designed to control smartphones, smartwatches and other devices. It's not a new product…

How to tap the potential of Google’s search Suggest for multilingual search and better understanding of online search behaviour

As SEO has evolved, so too has the process of keyword research/analysis. The days of relying solely on Google’s Keyword Tool (now the Keyword Planner) to generate simple target keyword lists has long gone with the emergence of semantic search, Hummingbird and more longtail search opportunities. SEO is becoming ever more sophisticated and therefore keyword research must do so, too. Whilst Google’s Keyword Planner is still an effective tool, a number of other free tools can be used to understand consumer search behaviour. And now we can add a new tool to this list: Keywordtool.io.

A reminder about Google’s search suggest

As with other tools like Übersuggest, Keywordtool.io uses Google’s Autocomplete engine to generate a variety…

How do your prospects really search? New research shows the need to go beyond simplistic keyword lists

This new research from Blue Nile is aimed at helping marketers better understand how people search online and to understand the patterns in how they formulate their searches through questions. For example, do they search using single words or short phrases or through longer questions including words such as 'How', 'When' and 'Which'? The research found that such question-based queries were common: '27% of respondents phrased their query in the form of a question, with ‘How’ being the most commonly used prefix.'

Can the Google Keyword Planner be misleading?

When using Google Keyword Planner, you need to seed the tool with one keyword or a short phrase. But the results returned often don't include the questions since they are diverse and their volumes are relatively low. So if you limit your understanding of search behaviour to this tool you could be missing out on…

New consumer insights showing the importance of search in different sectors

When I'm asked by people who are starting new businesses where they should focus their online marketing, search marketing is usually near the top of the recommendation. Of course it depends on the level of consumer intent or demand for the new service, i.e. how many people are searching for products and services. The importance of search marketing today is shown by our new infographic created by JBH Marketing. It shows the importance of search drawing on the latest data from SimilarWeb on the level of consumer demand through searching and including practical advice and analysis from some of the top places to learn about search like Moz, Search Engine Land and Searchmetrics. So, I hope you agree that the infographic presents a compelling case for investing more…