The Q4 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 Q4 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 Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q4 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.

BullionByPost reported the highest 4xx errors of all gold bullion dealers (420). This dealer should check for broken links and implement replacement redirects to prevent users being sent to 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.

In our previous report, Baird & Co. flagged the slowest mobile site speed (13). This quarter, its mobile site score remains the same. This gold bullion dealer should make images as lightweight as possible by using WebP and JPB when possible, reducing the image size, and compressing all images. A mobile-friendly website theme will also help to improve download speeds.

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 rating for this quarter ranged between 76 and 26, with UKBullion.com reporting the lowest DA score of all brands. This dealer also received the fewest backlinks, which can harm a brand’s DA score. To increase the chances of more (and high-authority) backlinks, UKBullion.com can refresh previous content, so their website is filled with relevant, current data. Publishing guides that are informative and original will also encourage other websites to backlink to them.

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. 

Only GOLD.co.uk reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop (-36%), while 5 brands saw a decline on mobile (GOLD.co.uk reported the biggest loss of -51%). With this in mind, all gold bullion dealers should ensure they’re using a mobile-friendly theme to optimise the web experience for those using accessing websites from their mobile.

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 secure the highest total Universal Search appearances (23,427) — a decrease from 27,860 in our previous audit. The majority of these impressions came from ‘reviews’, ‘people also ask’, and ‘images’. On the other hand, Baird & Co. received the fewest appearances (135) and should reach out to past customers to encourage them to leave an online review.

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.

BullionByPost received the highest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (5,376), while The Royal Mint secured the highest for positions 4–10 (6,324). It’s important that brands utilise positions 4–10 to ensure they’re increasing their chances of ranking higher up in search engine results.

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 UK gold bullion providers, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see the potential in investments and product availability.

We’ve included an example of The Royal Mint’s sponsored post. This gold bullion dealer included time-sensitive topics across 2 posts to create posts that are relevant to its target audience in real time.

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.

The Royal Mint continues to have the largest Facebook page (458,400 Likes) — a slight increase from 458,100 in our previous audit. This gold bullion dealer also has the largest Instagram account (68,500 followers). It’s important that brands forgive themselves for dips in their number of social media followers but that they track their social media engagement to monitor which posts perform best.

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.

Physical Gold is still the one to watch for accessibility alerts (it reported 190 this quarter compared to 226 previously). It’s important that all brands celebrate their wins, though they should continue to reduce alerts by increase alt information for images, create a logical order of information across their website, and more. Physical Gold also reported the highest contrast errors (70) and should assess their use of colour and remove any high contrasts to improve the web experience for users with a colour vision deficiency.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q4 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