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

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK estate agents has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national estate agents, including Reeds Rains, Purplebricks, Hunters, Connells, Knight Frank, Savills, Your Move, Chancellors, Yopa, Haart, Foxtons, and William H Brown.

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 estate agents to win brand exposure locally, drive in-branch footfall, and generate property viewings. 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 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 estate agents on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing estate agents, 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 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 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK estate agents was £6,451, 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 £59 . 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, Purplebricks has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £4, and Foxtons has the highest at £418.

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, Reeds Rains has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £2,630, and Purplebricks has the highest at £330,000.

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 estate agents, who'll need to manage an ever-changing range of homes, they'll want to keep on top of their internal linking and redirect strategy, ensuring users looking for pages that have been removed are redirected to alternative content.

In our previous report, Haart flagged 792 4xx errors, and we suggested they regularly assess their linking strategy to remove broken links. This quarter, Haart has reduced their 4xx errors to 651 — though they’re still the brand to watch. It’s important that brands aim to reduce their 4xx errors to prevent directing users to a dead end.

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. Estate agents will want to ensure homebuyers have a positive mobile experience, as modern house-hunters will often be browsing on mobile while doing other tasks.

The overall mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 60 and 30, with both Haart and Connells reporting the lowest mobile site score. These UK estate agents can increase this score by reducing page weight and ensuring their websites are mobile-friendly to optimise the web experience for users. On the other hand, Purplebricks reported the fastest mobile site speed.

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 estate agents, they can work with a digital PR specialist on engaging content that can be picked up by local and national press, including topics such as most desirable places to live, house price changes over time, and even demographic splits of house-type ownerships.

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. Last quarter, the estate agent with the lowest DA score was William H Brown (43). This quarter, the DA score ranged between 79 and 44 with William H Brown continuing to be the brand to watch (though they saw a slight improvement of 1 point from the previous audit). It’s important that estate agents make sure they’re publishing quality content to their website to encourage authoritative websites to direct backlinks to them, helping to expand their reach.

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. High mortgage rates and house prices will make estate agents vulnerable to changing consumer habits, so each will need to be cautious that they're consistently optimising for the most relevant terms, so as not to lose traffic to competitors.

In our previous audit, 3 estate agents saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, and 10 saw a decrease on mobile. This quarter, only 1 estate agent (Hunters) saw a decrease on desktop, and 5 saw a decrease on mobile. Overall, there’s been an improvement in organic traffic across both devices. Estate agents can continue to make improvements by ensuring their websites load quickly and are accessible across all devices.

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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Local pack' and 'image pack' results could prove most useful for estate agents, who can instantly show their location and houses for sale directly from the SERP.

Purplebricks has taken the top spot for the most overall Universal Search appearances (45,981), and Foxtons is now in second place, with 30,361 overall 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 brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Estate agents performing well for 'people also ask' results are also likely to be performing well for longtail keywords, and should be targeting both informational phrases and questions, along with specific terms that indicate a high-buying intent.

Knight Frank is the estate agent to beat this quarter, with the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (2,533) — overtaking Foxtons. However, Your Move received the most appearances for positions 4–10 (18,653). Securing appearances for these positions shouldn’t be something that brands overlook, as it can help them improve their rankings in search engines over time.

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. Estate agents can use Facebook ads to promote time-sensitive content quickly, as opposed to waiting for organic posts to gain traction and build reach.

We’ve included examples of Haart’s sponsored posts. This UK estate agent should stick to a maximum of 3 lines of text with their Facebook posts, as lengthy posts can discourage social media users from interacting with their content.

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. Estate agents can look to creating shareable content across the full range of home buying and ownership, from guides to the processes involved in buying a home at various stages of the property ladder, to advice for selling your home, and even guides on how to maximise the value of your home over time.

Knight Frank has the most Facebook Likes (64,300), while Savills has the most Instagram followers (245,600). Brands should also monitor their social media engagement rate to check whether their followers are interacting with their content. This quarter, Your Move received the highest total engagement rate (9,089).

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. As housing is a universal need, estate agents must consider all levels of ability when designing their site. Estate agents should also consider being clear about accessibility benefits within their house descriptions, normalising any additional accessibility needs house-hunters may have.

In our previous report, Your Move received the highest accessibility alerts (241). This quarter, Your Move continues to receive 241, and Savills is close behind with 224 accessibility alerts. Additionally, William H Brown received 107 total errors.

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 Mike Movassaghi.