The Q4 2024 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 Q4 2024 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 Q3 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 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.

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.

Lancaster Insurance received the highest 4xx errors (4,258), and it shouldn’t ignore these errors, as broken links may result in losing valuable traffic with users becoming frustrated. To prevent a negative effect on this company’s website’s SEO, it should regularly monitor and replace broken links across its website.

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 report, Heritage was at the bottom of the scoreboard for mobile site speed. This quarter, Heritage remains the company to watch and has reduced its score from 17 to 16. Brands can increase their mobile site speed by incorporating lazy loading and reducing page weight — these are just two of the most effective and quickest ways to make improvements.

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. The DA rating for this quarter ranged between 70 and 6, with 4 of the 12 companies scoring above 50. However, the brand to watch is Classics, which received the lowest DA score. This company also received the fewest backlinks, and it should form relationships with other websites with a similar target audience to help increase its outreach, which will improve its DA score.

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 insurance companies reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop (Brightside and Footman James), while 5 companies saw a decline on mobile. Footman James is the company to watch, as it saw the biggest decline on mobile, too.

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 sit at the top of the leaderboard for the most Universal Search appearances (14,684) — a reduction from 15,402 in our previous audit. On the other hand, Classics is the company to watch, as it only received a total of 1 Universal Search appearances.

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 continues to report the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,505) and positions 4–10 (4,289), demonstrating that this company has a successful keyword strategy. On the other hand, Classics received 0 impressions for all positions, except the top 100, and this company should reassess the keyword phrases it’s using to ensure they match their target audience’s search terms.

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 an example of Keith Michaels’ sponsored Facebook posts. This insurance company included imagery that perfectly matches the text, though it should focus on including unique written text with each post to prevent social media users becoming exhausted from the same template layout.

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.

Carole Nash has the largest Facebook page (152,500 Likes) — over three times as many as the runner-up account — and the largest Instagram account (16,100 followers). However, Autonet received the highest total engagement rate of all companies.

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 audit, Footman James received the highest accessibility alerts, and it’s still received the highest alerts this quarter (147). Accessibility alerts can harm readability for those using a screen reader, so it’s important that brands reduce redundant title text, very small text, suspicious link text, and more.

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 Usman Malik on Unsplash