The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK care comparison sites has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK care comparison sites perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK care comparison sites has just been published. It covers the largest 11 national care comparison sites servicing the UK, including carehome.co.uk, Care.com, Autumna, Carers UK, Care Choices, Curam, Lottie, Care Sourcer, PrimeCarers, Outstanding Care Homes, and TrustedCare.co.uk.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other care comparison sites to win brand exposure locally, drive organic visibility, and generate online enquiries. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q1 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 11 care comparison providers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing care comparison sites, or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each site based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. Care comparison sites will need to be particularly mindful of creating a positive site experience at a potentially stressful time for families. They'll need to ensure pathways to key pages such as fee information and potential care locations are clearly marked, and that users can trust them to make safe recommendations and comparisons.

In the last report, PrimeCarers returned 2,246 4xx errors, and it’s increased this figure to 2,330 in this quarter. This care comparison site needs to assess its internal links to check for any broken links.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. As with minimising the levels of technical errors, care comparison sites will want to ensure users can get the answers they need quickly, from a high-performing site which doesn't add to existing frustrations.

For Q1 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 68 and 25, with Care Choices scoring the lowest. This care comparison site should ensure that it’s optimising images to help increase its mobile site speed by the next quarter.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. For brands operating in a niche sector, such as care, building authority may feel challenging. However, care comparison sites can make the most of local publications, as well as repurpose existing content to capitalise on relevant events and industry trends.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA range for this quarter was between 83 and 13, with 4 sites scoring below the 40 benchmark. Outstanding Care Homes had the lowest DA score, and it should assess the quality and quantity of its backlinks to help increase this score.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. Though we're seeing reductions in traffic across many sectors, due to the cost of living crisis, care comparison sites have a strong opportunity to build traffic and interest, as users will want to find the best quality care and compare prices of nearby options.

Nine of the 11 care comparison sites saw a loss in organic mobile traffic, with Outstanding Care Homes seeing the biggest loss (a 95% reduction). There are several strategies these brands can adopt to increase their organic mobile traffic, such as assessing their longtail keyword strategy.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For care comparison sites, they'll want to ensure they have a strong presence for 'reviews', 'people also ask', and 'local pack' results, helping build trust with searchers directly from the SERP.

Carehome.co.uk continues to have the most Universal Search results, with an increase of ‘reviews’ from the previous quarter (from 66,000 to 74,700 in this report).

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Longtail keywords for care comparison sites could show high-conversion intent, or they could be questions about life in a residential care home, the options for care at home, or even pre-care home residential solutions such as retirement apartment complexes.

Carehome.co.uk has the strongest longtail keyword strategy this quarter again, scoring 20,204 appearances in positions 3 — an increase from 19,100 in our previous audit. This care comparison site also has the most appearances for positions 4–10, demonstrating that it has a working keyword strategy.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. For care comparison sites, Facebook ads are an opportunity to manage exposure within areas their partners are seeing a large amount of capacity or vacancies, enabling them to quickly manage fluctuating residency levels..

We’ve included three examples of Care.com’s sponsored Facebook posts. All three posts utilise vertical media to tailor to mobile users. The text is the same across all three posts, implying that it’s testing its engagement rates based on its imagery/video choices.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. For brands in a service-based sector, such as care comparison sites, content is an opportunity to create long-term touchpoints with prospective residents and their families, by creating pieces that help support them through managing at home, before guiding them to care home residency when the time comes.

The majority of the sites favour Facebook, and Care.com has the largest Facebook page (with 832,400 followers — a slight decrease from the previous quarter).

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, care comparison sites can lose the interest or prospective residents and clients, who may turn elsewhere out of frustration. Unsurprisingly, this is particularly essential in the care sector which caters to both older customers, and those looking for quick, well-presented answers during what can be a challenging time.

In our last report, PrimeCarers flagged 104 alerts, which it’s increased to 108 in Q1 2024. Upon closer inspection, these alerts are mainly due to a noscript element and redundant alternative text, which must be addressed to not impact accessibility for those using a screen reader.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2024 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

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