The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK insurance companies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK insurance companies perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK insurance companies has just been published.  It covers the 12 largest national insurance companies, including Footman James, Lancaster Insurance, Heritage, Performance Direct, Sterling, Brightside, Classics, Keith Michaels, Adrian Flux, Kingfisher, Autonet, and Carole Nash.

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 insurance companies to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate policy enquiries & sign-ups. 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 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 insurance companies on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK insurance companies 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 retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of a 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 and 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.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q1 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK insurance companies was £15,834, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £11 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. 

There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, both Sterling and Carole Nash have the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £14, and Lancaster Insurance has the highest at £42.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Autonet has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £345, and Sterling has the highest at £585,000.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

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.  For insurance companies, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers looking into insurance companies and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as different insurance options, enquiry forms, and FAQs.

In our previous audit, Lancaster Insurance reported 4,258 4xx errors. This quarter, Lancaster Insurance has reduced their 4xx errors to 155, suggesting they’ve addressed many of their broken links. When companies assess and update their broken links, they improve the web experience for users and prevent them from being directed to dead ends.

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 will see a significant improvement in your overall conversion rates. Insurance companies need to ensure their customers have a positive experience on their mobile site, as these brands will want to ensure they're giving an impression of being fast and reliable at each touchpoint with potential customers.

In our previous audit, Heritage was the company to watch, reporting a mobile site speed of 16. This quarter, Heritage has made improvements to their mobile site speed, scoring 28. Currently, the insurance company with the slowest mobile site speed is Brightside, scoring 18. A slow-loading website can deter users from staying on the website, which can increase a brand’s bounce rate.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) 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. Insurance companies should be continually pushing to improve their DA - they can do this by sharing their finance plans and current offers, or collaborating with relevant companies on joint content projects that may win them backlinks.

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. In our previous audit, Classics reported the lowest DA score (6). This quarter, Classics has reduced their DA score to 4.8, continuing to make them the company with the lowest score. On the other hand, Adrian Flux reported a DA score of 70 — the highest of all brands. It’s important that brands focus on uploading original, quality content that helps to make other websites perceive them as a reliable source of information, encouraging them to backlink to them.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, 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. Insurance companies are in a niche group where ‘popularity’ never changes - everyone will always need car insurance, therefore these companies are competing for what should be a consistent pool of traffic. That being said, they must ensure they have a strong organic search strategy in place to capture traffic from changing search terms, to tap into topical needs.

Two of the companies reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Brightside receiving the biggest loss (-39%). Meanwhile, 6 companies reported a decrease on mobile, with Brightside also receiving the biggest loss (-68%).

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results are 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. Insurance companies should be utilising all universal search features as potential customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs' and 'people also ask'.

Adrian Flux continues to secure the most overall Universal Search appearances (17,159) — nearly 3 times as many of the runner up. The majority of these appearances came from ‘images’ (6,800) followed by ‘reviews (6,200).

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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options insurance companies could be using such as ‘best car insurance companies’ and ‘who to use for car insurance’.

Adrian Flux reported the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,523) and positions 4–10 (4,368). On the other hand, Classics reported zero appearances for all positions. This insurance company should ensure they’re following a keyword strategy and regularly assessing their 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 insurance companies, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see upcoming events and ticket availability.

We’ve included examples of Lancaster Insurance’s sponsored posts. This UK insurance company included branded imagery on each post, helping users to identify them at a glance — which is important on social media where users tend to scroll through their feed quickly.

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 a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about different financing options and special offers.

Keith Michaels’ has the most Facebook Likes (51,000), with Adrian Flux close behind (46,100 Likes). Meanwhile, Adrian Flux has the most Instagram followers (13,800). But rather than just relying on social media followers/likes, companies should also regularly assess their social media engagement. Heritage secured the highest total engagement rate of all brands (9,635).

Website Readability & Accessibility

Around 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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. All insurance companies need to ensure their website is accessible for all customers looking at car insurance options.

In our previous report, Footman James received the highest accessibility alerts (147). This quarter, Footman James has decreased their accessibility alerts to 137, though they’re still the company with the highest. Footman James also reported the most contrast errors (49).

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2025 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 Rory Tarplee.

Photo by Usman Malik on Unsplash