The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK find a trade sites has just been published. Learn how the top 10 UK find a trade sites perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK find a trade sites has just been published. It covers the largest 10 UK find a trade sites, including Rated People, Checkatrade, TrustATrader, MyJobQuote, Bark.com, Book a Builder UK, Houzz, Local Heroes, Which? Trusted Traders, and MyBuilder.
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 find a trade websites to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and increase listing volumes. 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.
Q3 2024 winners leader board
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 find a trade websites on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK find a trade sites or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand 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 under-perform. 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. Find a trade websites will want to ensure that old, or expired listings do not impact their technical website compliance.
Book a Builder UK flagged 583 4xx errors. It’s important that this find a trade site fixes any internal broken links, as these will prevent search engine crawlers from accurately indexing content from the site, which has a negative impact on SEO.
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. Find a trade sites will want to ensure they are quick to use, so users needing to find a tradesperson quickly will find them easy to access and navigate.
In our previous report, Houzz raised the biggest concerns with a site speed of 27. This quarter, Houzz has increased its site speed to 38, and the overall range for all sites is between 65 and 35, with Bark.com flagging the lowest. It’s important that all companies aim for a maximum of 3 seconds for content to load to prevent consumers becoming frustrated and leaving the site.
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 find a trader sites, they'll want to consider working with a digital PR specialist to identify backlink reclamation opportunities, along with ideate new ways of building backlinks and referral traffic.
The DA for this quarter ranged between 90 and 67, with Local Heroes flagged the lowest score. While this site didn’t receive the fewest backlinks, it reported backlinks from the fewest domains, which can have a negative impact on a brand’s DA score. Guest blogging on websites with a similar readership is an effective way to make improvements.
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. Find a trade websites will want to keep tabs on the most searched-for trades, to identify whether the cost-of-living crisis is having an impact on the types of trades people are searching for.
In our previous report, Local Heroes flagged the biggest loss in organic traffic. This quarter, Trusted Traders reported the biggest decline in organic traffic on desktop, and Houzz saw the biggest decline in organic traffic on 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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Reviews' will be a key Universal Search result for find a trade websites, as they'll want to build trust with users searching for reliable tradespeople.
Checkatrade reported the most Universal Search appearances (309,427), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’. In fact, this was the category that reported the highest number of appearances overall.
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. Find a trade sites can optimise towards specific trades, locations, and availabilities, to capture traffic from users with a high conversion intent.
Checkatrade reported the most Universal Search appearances (309,427), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’. In fact, this was the category that reported the highest number of appearances overall.
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.
We’ve included examples of Which? Trusted Traders’ sponsored Facebook posts. This find a trade site included personalised imagery to attract scrollers’ attention, though it should stick to a maximum of 3 lines per Facebook post to maximise people’s attention.
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. Find a trade sites can create shareable content such as guides to finding the right tradesperson, common household maintenance tasks that will need carrying out, or even how to do simple fixes at home (building brand awareness and trust).
Houzz reported the largest social media accounts (2.8 million on Facebook and 94,500 on Instagram). These figures are lower than our previous report, though it’s to be expected that social media followers will fluctuate for all companies, as users discover new accounts on these competitive platforms.
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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Everyone will need to welcome tradespeople into their homes at some point or another, so find a trade sites must ensure that those who are vulnerable, such as blind or partially sighted users, can place trust within their choice of tradesperson from the very first point of contact.
Local Heroes has reported the most accessibility alerts (151), which, under close inspection, are due to redundant title text and should be updated to improve readability for those using a screen reader. Additionally, TrustATrader flagged 115 contrast errors, and it’s important that this site updates these to ensure that those with a colour vision deficiency have a fair consumer
Get the full 70-page Q3 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 Callum Hill on Unsplash
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