The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK live-in care providers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK live-in care providers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK live-in care providers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national live-in care providers, including Home Instead, Bluebird Care, Radfield Home Care, Consultus Care, Abbots Care, Helping Hands Home Care, Live In Care, Agincare, Right at Home UK, Cera, Trinity Homecare, and The Good 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 live-in care providers to win brand exposure locally, improve 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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 live-in care providers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK live-in care providers or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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.
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 live-in care providers, they'll want to ensure that potential clients and their families can easily get the information they need to feel comfortable in their care decisions. Live-in care providers should therefore be ensuring they have clear pathways to key informational pages, such as locations, fees and funding.
Bluebird Care is the provider to watch, reporting 404 errors (549). 404 errors are harmful because they disrupt the user journey and lead to frustration. When a visitor can’t reach the content they were expecting, they often leave the site rather than trying again. This increases bounce rates and reduces overall engagement.
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 ensuring key pages are easy to find, live-in care providers will want to ensure their sites are quick and simple to use, to help potential clients make decisions faster.
The mobile site speed ranged between 57 and 23 this quarter, with Radfield Home Care reporting the slowest speed and Consultus Care continuing to secure the fastest speed (an increased from 54 previously). Slow mobile site speed has serious implications for how users experience a website. Mobile visitors expect pages to load quickly, especially when browsing on the go or using mobile data. If a site takes too long to load, users are far more likely to abandon it before engaging with the content. This leads to higher bounce rates, lower session durations and fewer meaningful interactions overall.
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. Live-in care providers can look to improve their domain authority with a comprehensive digital PR strategy, that targets relevant publications (such as local press or partner vendors) to gain authoritative 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 report, Abbots Care received the lowest DA score (31). This quarter, Abbots Care has slightly decreased their DA score to 30 — they should aim for at least 40 to reach the ‘average’ zone. However, the provider with the lowest DA score this quarter is Independent People Live-In Care, scoring 19. A high domain authority signals credibility to both users and search engines. Websites with reputable backlinks and high-quality content often score well, which helps build trust around the brand. When visitors perceive a site as authoritative, they're more likely to engage, convert, and return in the future.
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. Live-in care providers may be impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, as families could be looking to alternative care routes in order to save money. Therefore, our providers could be battling for a smaller pool of organic visitors.
Four brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with The Good Care Group receiving the biggest loss (-29%). On mobile, 4 brands saw a drop in organic traffic, with Home Instead receiving the biggest loss on this device (-33%). Technical SEO also plays a major role in traffic growth on both devices. Ensuring pages are crawlable, fixing broken links, and improving core web vitals all contribute to better rankings. A technically strong site benefits both desktop and mobile performance, helping search engines understand and trust the site more effectively.
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. For live-in care providers, 'local pack', 'reviews' and 'people also ask' will be key opportunities in universal search to grow trust in their service, along with provide more information, directly from the SERP.
Home Instead secured the most Universal Search appearances (3,678). The majority of their appearances came from ‘people also ask’ (2,379).
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. For live-in care providers, longtail keywords are an opportunity to rank for more in-depth information that potential clients may have, which can help build much-needed trust from the early consideration stages.
Helping Hands Home Care secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,554) — an increase from 1,351 previously. Home Instead has since secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (2,761). Websites should also create dedicated content around longtail keywords instead of trying to force them into existing pages. Blog posts, guides, FAQs, and support articles are ideal formats for targeting these phrases. This approach allows websites to answer specific questions in depth while improving their chances of ranking for niche searches.
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 live-in care customers, Facebook presents an opportunity to see 'local' relevant content, build brand awareness and a positive image of their service, and even be used to recruit new carers in key areas.
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. Content about life as a client would be both interesting and engaging for live-in care providers to share, and also encourage potential clients and their families to make an enquiry.
Bluebird Care secured the most Facebook Likes (19,000) and the most Instagram followers (6,019). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Home Instead received the highest total engagement rate (10,573) and the highest average engagement (100).
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. For live-in care providers, accessibility is particularly important as they must ensure everyone is able to engage with their website.
In our previous report, Helping Hands Home Care flagged the most accessibility alerts (83). This quarter, Helping Hands Home Care has reduced their accessibility alerts to 29 — no longer making them the provider to watch. Currently, The Good Care Group reported the most accessibility alerts (111). Accessibility alerts disrupt conversion opportunities. If forms cannot be completed with a keyboard or interactive elements lack proper focus states, users may abandon the site entirely. This leads to lost leads, fewer sales, and reduced engagement.
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.