The SEO Secrets Behind Compare The Market's 5 Million Monthly Visitors

In the UK, Compare the Market is a household name.

And in this Growth Through Content case study, we'll look at how they generate so much traffic.

You'll learn.

• The sneaky H1 technique that you can steal.
• How they leverage content design to create great-looking pages.
• The expert section that I'll be using from now on.
• And how I would grow their reach (it's not what you'd think).

Let's dive in.

What is Compare the Market?

Compare the Market is an insurance comparison website launched in 2006.

But that's only telling half he story.

In 2007 they launched their Compare the Meerket tv ad campaign.

Created by ad team at VCCP it disrupted the insurance sector and in its first 3 months caused a 200% increase of year on year search traffic.

Today, the ad campaign is still going strong and is known to all ages.

While they don't gain as much traffic as the leading comparison site (moneysupermarket.com), in the last year they've actually increased their traffic by over 2 million monthly visitors.

And they're now shoulder to shoulder with their largest competitor.

While good TV creative is perhaps the best SEO technique. You've got to respect, the SEO team behind the site.

What are their SEO Metrics?

The site has a superb UR of 81 and a DR of 77.

With 5 million monthly uniques from 418,000 keywords, this has an equivalent traffic value of $26 million in monthly PPC spend.

Sure, that might not be accurate but it just shows the power of the site.

As you'd expect, they rank for all the big keywords in the niche.

So, what secrets can we learn from their site?

The Subtle H1

For most SEO copywriters, the balance is writing copy that wows, and helps to generate conversions.

But often, this leads with the title being a tad boring.

What Compare the Market does is use a subtle, small H1 above their main page copy.

This is a cheeky method to ensure their pages hit the SEO goals but also read well.

And yes, their competitors do this too.

But what else is going on?

Long Pages...but not too long

Compare the Markets top pages all weigh in between 3000 and 5000 words.

You won't find anything above that, and for good reason.

Super long pages lead to super bored readers, and super bored readers leave sites.

But they've actually addressed the elements of content design well, making the pages visually appealing.

This is great, but the next part I love more.

Different Page Design

Every page is slightly different.

Sure, there are similar elements and and some design cross over, but it's clear that thought went into the pages.

This is rare in most websites.

Expert Comments: the super fuel in an AI world

Another superb element is the 'expert comments' on the pages.

The SEO team deserve a pat on the back for this part, because it's possibly the best expert/ author system I've ever seen.

Not only does every expert have their own page, I noticed this little digital PR gem.

I only observed this once, but I love how they are using expert commentary to help search engines and manual quality raters find out about the experts.

They've actually added the 'media mentions' to the experts page, which is a great way for digital PR to add even more SEO value.

Of course, there's a lot more going on with this site, I could spend all day on it.

But I do like to challenge myself.

What would I do to grow this site even further?

It's surprisingly simple.

SEO World Building

Compare the Market have a great brand.

But then so does the Money Saving Expert.

The difference I'm, talking about is trust.

Martin Lewis sold his website 'money saving expert' to the Money Supermarket Group for around 80 million but it's peanuts when you consider how much the British public trust the brand of the money saving expert.

But that trust can be reverse engineered.

And here's how I'd do it.

Building an Informational Brand

We're living in a world where AI content will make production of websites and information even easier.

And that does come with some downsides.

For example, it will make content somewhat of a commodity.

This means, that the 'brand' behind the content will matter more than ever.

So, how does that look in reality?

Thanks to the work of top SEO Glen Allsopp, we can see the 16 brands that do dominate search.

And this is the play.

To dominate search.

And apply brand relationship spectrum to SEO.

This means that brand growth in search can come in various ways.

For example, Compare the Market is owned by the BLG Group. My suggestion to anyone in that group would be to create their own publishing empire that touches every sector.

You could do this in many ways.

They might choose to buy a huge website like Car Throttle to reach more potential customers by owning the ad space.

Or they could start their own website brands.

Eg. 'Car Compare: a car review and comparison site'.

I haven't done much research, they might already be doing this, but brand building through search is imho the next logical leap for brands trying to reach more people.

Yes, it's going to cost money, but it's a lot cheaper than giving your money to Google each month for clicks, most of which that don't convert.

We saw an example of informational brand growth happen last year when Semrush acquired leading search blog and SEO training provider, Backlinko.

And I expect this to happen more often.

But as I said, this is how I'd grow Compare the Market, I'd focus on building informational brands that reach your ideal audience.

Final Thoughts

Ok, so I went a bit deep at the end, but for most, the key takeaways are your expert sections, content design and the nice use of the H1.

Both are easy to apply.

As for the brand growth, it goes to show you, how building a personal/ informational brand can pay off.

Backlinko was started as a simple WordPress blog, Money Saving Expert was started in much the same way.

Trust and attention have huge value.

Andy