The Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK Gold bullion dealers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK Gold bullion dealers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK Gold bullion dealers has just been published.  It covers the largest 12 national Gold bullion dealers, including BullionVault, BullionByPost, GOLD.co.uk, UKBullion.com, The Gold Bullion Company, Physical Gold, ATS Bullion, Atkinsons Bullion & Coins, The Royal Mint, Baird & Co., and Chards.

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 gold bullion dealers to win brand exposure locally, drive traffic online, and generate orders. 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q2 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 gold bullion dealers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK gold bullion providers or request a copy of the report for the full review.

Request the report

What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer 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 click 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. Gold bullion dealers will want to ensure key pages, such as investment guides, are clearly signposted and available for users to visit.

In the last report, Chards had the highest number of 4xx errors (957). This quarter, Chards saw a major reduction to 207 4xx errors. BullionByPost has the highest 4xx errors (6,512), which is over seven times the amount from the last quarter. This gold bullion provider needs to assess its website to check for 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 a luxury investment item, gold bullion dealers will want to ensure their sites are quick and give an excellent brand impression from every digital touchpoint.

For Q2 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 52 and 8, with only Physical Gold scoring above the recommended 50%. However, the brand to keep an eye on is BullionByPost, which saw the lowest score. It can increase its site speed by optimising images and choosing a website design that’s mobile-friendly.

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. Gold bullion dealers can look to engage with a digital PR specialist to identify any potential backlink opportunities and develop attention-grabbing campaigns that boost organic visibility.

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 for this quarter ranged between 76 and 24, with UKBullion.com reporting the lowest score for this category. It can increase its DA by increasing its organic traffic (adopting an effective keyword strategy can assist with this).

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. As consumers turn to alternate ways of investing and keeping their finances safe in the cost of living crisis, we would expect the search terms and trending content around gold bullion to change. Dealers with a good grasp of these changing interests and leading topics will be best placed to maintain their organic performance.

Five brands reported a loss in organic traffic for desktop, while six saw a loss in organic traffic for mobile. All sites encountered more traffic on desktop, which highlights that all companies should update their mobile website to make it easier and more enjoyable for consumers to navigate.

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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'People also ask' is a useful Universal Search opportunity for gold bullion dealers, who can address common queries about investing in gold bullion, capturing attention and traffic from those exploring the investment potential.

The Royal Mint continues to report the most appearances for Universal Search results (a total of 31,420), with the majority of these coming from the ‘image’ category. Brands should look for ways to increase their results in the ‘people also ask’ sector to help increase their appearance in SERPs.

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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Gold bullion dealers should pay particular attention to terms indicating a high-purchase intent as, though these may be low-traffic, they are more likely to secure sales.

The Royal Mint saw the most appearances for longtail keywords in position 3. This gold bullion dealer is also at the top of the leaderboard for positions 4–10, increasing its chances of remaining at the top for the next quarter, too.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, 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 UK gold bullion providers, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see the potential in investments and product availability.

We’ve included three examples of The Royal Mint’s sponsored Facebook posts. One of their posts included an image without any text, which was a missed opportunity to showcase their services/products.

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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Sharing information about gold bullion investment is a great way of creating shareable content that is likely to pick up traction.

All dealers favoured Facebook, and The Royal Mint has the largest Facebook page (with 459,500 Likes). This dealer also reported the highest total engagement (27,420) — an important analytic that provides brands with insights as to whether customers interact with their posts.

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, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Accessibility should be at the forefront of any brands strategy, particularly when asking users to place large amounts of trust in your service, such as investment.

In our previous audit, Physical Gold flagged the highest number of alerts (228), which it’s increased to 230 in Q2 2024. The majority of these alerts are due to no script elements, which it must address to avoid affecting readability for those using a screen reader.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 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.

Photo by Zlaťáky.cz on Unsplash