If you’re looking for new numbers that you can paste into a slide and defend in budget/RFP meetings, this is the place for you.
We’ve pulled the latest B2B-specific statistics and organized them around the most important things in B2B SEO.
Here are the statistics worth citing in 2025.
Organic search remains the top driver of B2B discovery and funnel.
- The average conversion rate for organic searches is 5.0%. (ruler analysis)
- 27% of marketers who can identify popular channels rank organic search as number one. (binary needs)
- B2B SaaS SEO shows an average ROI of about 702%, breaking even in about 7 months within a 3-year window. (Page 1 Saint)
- The CPL generated by organic traffic ($147) is typically lower than paid search in SaaS ($280). (Page 1 Saint)
- Google sends 345 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity combined. (arefs)
- 96.98% of clicks occur within the first 10 search results. (arefs)
- 45.7% of Google searches are brand searches. (arefs)
- AI overview reduced website clicks by 34.5%. (arefs)
- 26% of brands received zero mentions in the AI overview. (arefs)
- 28% of ChatGPT’s most cited pages have zero organic visibility in Google searches. (arefs)
- AI search platforms prefer citations to content that is 25.7% fresher than content cited in traditional organic results. (arefs)
- The top 50 brands appearing in AI Overviews account for 28.9% of all citations. (arefs)
- 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages, ranking among the top 10 Google organic results. (arefs)
- ChatGPT has almost single-handedly driven the growth of website AI traffic, up 85% since January. (arefs)
- ChatGPT is the #1 AI referrer, accounting for over 80% of the website’s AI traffic. (arefs)
Artificial intelligence may have changed the SEO game, but good technical health is still important. If you can’t be crawled or indexed, you can’t show up in Google or other LLMs.
- 55.6% of SEO professionals said the value of technical SEO is often underestimated. (triple darts)
- 40% of B2B companies say they lack the in-house expertise needed to manage technical SEO. (Stasta)
- 78% of websites use some form of schema/markup. (W3 Technology)
- 80% of B2B buyers use mobile devices at work, and more than 60% say mobile devices played an important role in their most recent purchase. (BCG vaccine)
- Currently, approximately 40% of websites pass all Core Web Vitals thresholds. (Adi Osmani)
More and more marketers are using artificial intelligence to create content. However, one of the most important things in B2B remains high-quality thought leadership content.
- 46% of B2B marketers believe their content marketing budgets will increase by 2025. (Content Marketing Academy)
- 40% of B2B marketers say the biggest challenge they face in content marketing is conversion. 39% said this was a resource limitation and 33% said it was a measure of content effectiveness. (Content Marketing Academy)
- 87% of marketers use artificial intelligence to help create content. (arefs)
- AI content is 4.7 times cheaper than human-written content. (arefs)
- Companies spend an average of $188 per month on AI tools for content creation and marketing. (arefs)
- 51% of companies plan to increase spending on AI-generated content. (arefs)
- Marketers using AI published 42% more content: the median frequency of publishing for those using AI was 17 articles per month, compared to the median frequency of 12 articles per month for marketers who were not using AI. (arefs)
- Blog posts are the most common type of AI-generated content (87%). Brainstorming (76%), outlining (73%) and content updating (67%) are the top tasks for AI-assisted SEO. (arefs)
- 48.6% of SEOs believe digital PR is the most effective strategy in 2025. (buzz)
- The average cost of a high quality or top guest post is $692 – $957. (buzz)
- 95% of B2B decision-makers say strong thought leadership makes them more receptive to sales and marketing promotions. (Edelman LinkedIn)
- 51% of B2B decision-makers say quality thought leadership helps them convince C-level executives to support their choice of supplier. (Edelman LinkedIn)
- 79% of B2B decision-makers say they are more likely to advocate for proposals from companies that consistently provide high-quality thought leadership during the RFP process. (Edelman LinkedIn)
Buying cycles are longer, but buyers have shorter lists and buy from their preferred suppliers.
- 61% of B2B buyers prefer an agent-free buying experience; 73% of respondents actively avoid vendors that send irrelevant outreach. (Gartner Corporation)
- The shortlist is shrinking: 45% of buyers have 4 to 7 products on their 2023 shortlist, but 49% have 1 to 3 products on their 2024 shortlist. (G2)
- 34% of B2B buyers say research is the longest stage in their buying process, but AI power users are less likely to focus on this stage. (G2)
- 31% of B2B buyers visit review sites more frequently than other sources. (G2)
- B2B customers use an average of 10 interaction channels during the buying process (up from 5 in 2016). (McKinsey)
- Only 5% of B2B customers are “interested” at any given time. (LinkedIn)
- 81% of B2B buyers report finding their preferred supplier on first contact. (Demand generation report)
- The average buying group has grown to include at least 10-11 stakeholders. (6 senses)
- The typical B2B buying cycle now lasts 11.5 months. (6 senses)
- 71% of buyers selected their top product after creating their final list. (trust radius)
final thoughts
These B2B statistics point in the same direction: Despite advances in artificial intelligence, organic search remains the primary discovery and conversion channel. So when you focus on getting more AI visibilitydon’t forget the basics.
SEO is still important.
