The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK care home providers has just been published. Learn how 12 of the top UK care home providers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK care home providers has just been published. It covers 12 of the largest national care home providers, including  Barchester, Caring Homes, HC-One, Avery, Hamberley, Care UK, Signature, Maria Mallaband, Runwood Homes, Porthaven Care Homes, Westgate Healthcare, and Berkley Care Group. 

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 care home providers to win brand exposure locally, drive organic visibility, and generate online enquiries. 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 2026 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

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

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing care home providers, 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 site 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 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 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK care home providers was £4,734 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 £14. 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, Avery reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £1, and both Berkley Care Group and Porthaven Care Homes have the highest at £35.

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, Avery has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £1,170, and Porthaven Care Homes has the highest at £106,000. 

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 care home providers, they'll need to be particularly mindful of creating a positive site experience at a potentially stressful time for families. They'll need to ensure pathways to key pages such as fee information and locations are clearly marked, and that users can trust them from the offset to provide an excellent level of service and care.

In our previous audit, Porthaven Care Homes received the most 404 errors (68). This quarter, Porthaven Care Homes has decreased their total to 2 — currently the lowest of all providers. Now, the care home provider with the most 404 errors is Caring Homes (a total of 51). When users land on a 404 page after clicking from search results or ads, it creates a mismatch between expectation and reality. This disconnect can feel misleading and may reduce trust in both the website and the content that led them there. 

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 with minimising the levels of technical errors, care home providers will want to make sure users have a positive experience at every touchpoint, including by serving a fast, high-performing site which doesn't cause frustration.

In our last audit, Avery reported the slowest mobile site speed (25). This quarter, the mobile site speed ranged between 64 and 28, with both Signature and Porthaven Care Homes flagging the slowest speed. Avery has doubled their mobile site speed to 50 since our last audit. Mobile devices are often used in short bursts of attention, such as while commuting or waiting in queues. A fast-loading site aligns with these quick-use contexts, while a slow one risks losing users before they can consume meaningful information.

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 brands operating in a niche sector, such as care, building authority may feel challenging. However, care home providers can make the most of local publications, as well as repurpose existing content to capitalise on relevant events and industry trends.

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 report, both Berkley Care Group and Runwood Homes received the lowest DA (28). This quarter, Runwood Homes has increased their score to 29 (still at the bottom of the leaderboard currently), and Berkley Care Group has increased their score to 31. Domain authority encourages websites to invest in high-quality, relevant content to attract links and engagement. Customers gain value from richer resources, clearer information, and more trustworthy material.

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. Though we're seeing reductions in traffic across many sectors, due to the cost of living crisis, care homes will always remain an essential service. Care home providers should therefore be mindful of losing any traffic to their competitors, rather than losing traffic from a shrinking pool of interest.

Nine brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Berkley Care Group flagging the biggest loss (-43%). On mobile, three brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Westgate Healthcare seeing the biggest loss (-26%). Organic traffic performance can differ for the same content across devices. Brands should structure pages with headings, summaries, and expandable sections so content works equally well for mobile scanning and desktop reading.

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. Though we're seeing reductions in traffic across many sectors, due to the cost of living crisis, care homes will always remain an essential service. Care home providers should therefore be mindful of losing any traffic to their competitors, rather than losing traffic from a shrinking pool of interest.

Care UK continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (11,114) — an increase from 6,763 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (8,100).

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. Longtail keywords for care home providers could show high-conversion intent, or they could be questions about life in a residential care home, or the application and fee process.

Care UK continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,407) — a decrease from 1,456 previously. Barchester continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 4–10 (2,304) — a decrease from 2,320 previously. Longtail keywords are particularly effective for capturing local and contextual searches that include locations, situations, or audience types. Queries like these tend to be highly specific and less contested. Businesses serving defined regions or niches can therefore gain targeted visibility without competing nationally on broad 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 care home providers, Facebook ads are an opportunity to effectively (and quickly) manage exposure and visibility in key locations where they have room availability.

We’ve included screenshots of Care UK’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK care home provider should stick to a maximum of three lines of text per post to help increase their engagement rate.

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. For brands in a service-based sector, such as care home providers, content is an opportunity to create long-term touchpoints with prospective residents and their families, by creating pieces that help support them through managing at home, before guiding them to care home residency when the time comes.

HC-One secured the most Facebook Likes (20,700), and Barchester secured the most Instagram followers (2,000). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Barchester received the highest total engagement rate (2,383) and the highest average engagement (216).

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, care home providers can lose the interest or prospective residents, who may turn elsewhere out of frustration. Unsurprisingly, this is particularly essential in the care sector which caters to both older customers, and those looking for quick, well-presented answers during what can be a challenging time.

In our last audit, Signature reported the most accessibility alerts (1,345). This quarter, Signature has dramatically reduced their accessibility alerts 12 — no longer making them the brand to watch. Currently, Westgate Healthcare reported the most accessibility alerts (116). Avoiding reliance on colour alone to convey meaning ensures information is available to users with colour vision differences. Supplementing colour with icons, patterns, or text prevents accessibility errors and improves comprehension. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2026 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.