SEO Competitor Analysis: What Pest Control Service Providers in the UK Need To Do To Beat Their Competition

Looking to beat your competition? If yes, then it’s essential to find out what the online competitive landscape for your industry looks like. In this report, we conducted an SEO competition analysis for “pest control” in the UK. 

Our findings reveal which pest control companies are at the top of their game. And which are caught in a trap. In addition, we’ll also highlight any holes in their strategies. As well as outline what other pest control service providers need to do to beat their competition.

Did you know that since 2015, the pest control industry in the UK has grown exponentially? From $323.8 million (£245.2 million) in 2015 to $571.8 million (£432.9 million) in 2020 so far.

Discover what we found out in this competitor analysis pest control report. And replicate the success of these companies for your own business or industry by using the same SEO tactics effectively.  And start attracting clients, not mice.

In this report, we will be conducting an SEO competitor analysis of the top 10 ranking positions for the keyword: “pest control”.

The report will cover:

•  Keyword Overview
•  Competitive Landscape
•  Top 3 Organic Competitors Analysis

Competitive Landscape will look at:

• •  Top 10 Competitors
  •  Domain Authority
  •  Keyword Search Traffic
  •  Overall Website Traffic Growth
  •  Search Positions
  •  Backlinks
  •  Top 3 Ranking Positions

And, our Top 3 Organic Competitors Analysis will delve into:

• •  Content Analysis
  •  Backlinks Analysis
  •  Traffic Growth Analysis
  •  Paid Advertising Analysis
  •  Display Advertising Analysis

First, let’s take a look at our targeted keyword: pest control.

Overall, there are 27,100 average monthly searches for the keyword “pest control” in the UK.

The keyword difficulty is 70%. This indicates that it would be “hard” for a new website to rank page one of Google for this keyword. 

And the average price advertisers pay for a user’s click on an ad is £2.16.

First, we’ll look at the top 10 competitors ranking for our targeted keyword. This will help us to see the broader picture. As a result, we should be able to see which pest control service providers are ranking. As well as how well each is performing. 

All in all, the majority of websites in the top 10 results provide pest control services.

However, the top result is the UK Government website providing information about pest control services.

And we also find two competitors that sell pest control products but do not  provide pest control services.

Next we’ll look at domain authority of each of the top 10.

Overall, the website (that provides direct pest control services) with the highest domain authority is Manchester City Council (manchester.gov.uk). With a domain authority of 64.

And this far exceeds the average domain authority for the top 10 websites. As the average for those that provide pest control services in the UK is 51.

Note: Throughout this report, websites that provide pest control services will be highlighted in bold. And websites that do not provide pest control services are highlighted in grey on all charts.

In October 2020, the UK Government website received the majority of the search traffic for the keyword “pest control”.

And, they received 32% of the 27,100 monthly searches.

However, not too far behind is Rentokil, the top pest control company in the list. Rentokil received 21.88% of the 27,100 monthly searches.

Combined, the top 10 competitors received an estimated 83.71% of all the monthly search traffic (27,100).

Overall, our analysis of the top 10 URLs receiving traffic from searches for analysed keyword shows that:

•  6 are service pages
•  2 are informational pages
•  2 are product listing pages

We analysed the traffic of the top 5 pest control service providers between January 2012 and October 2020. 

Overall, Fantastic Services had the largest growth in traffic. And over a 5 year period, they went from 5 website visits (April 2015) to 109,239 (October 2020).

In comparison, Manchester City Council had the smallest amount of growth.

Despite having the smallest growth in traffic overall, in October 2020, Manchester City Council was receiving the most traffic (427,750).

And the VPS Group website was receiving the least amount of traffic (4,522).

In October 2020, the UK Government website had the highest number of top 3 search positions (293,386).

Not to mention, they dominate the top 3 search positions. With 96% of all the top 3 search positions held by the top competitors.

However, manchester.gov.uk is the pest control service provider with the highest number of top 3 search positions (2,936).

Unsurprisingly for a .gov domain, in October 2020, the UK Government website had the highest number of backlinks (2,530,329).

As a result of this, they currently have 54% of all the backlinks received by the top competitors.

Likely due to their domain, manchester.gov.uk is the pest control service provider with the highest number of backlinks (1,336,492).

Yet again, as of October 2020, the UK Government website found itself in the lead again. And this time, they had the highest percentage of follow backlinks (99.01%).

Second place goes to barnsley.gov.uk for being the pest control service provider with the highest percentage of follow backlinks (93.50%).

In May 2020, the top ranking position for the keyword “pest control” was held by rentokil.co.uk.

However, they slipped into second place in June 2020. And as a result, gov.uk became the top ranking position once more.

But, rentokil.co.uk also gained the third place ranking position.

As such, gov.uk and rentokil.co.uk have dominated the top 3 ranking positions for the keyword “pest control” ever since.

At the time of this report, the top 3 pest control service providers competing for the keyword “pest control” were:

• rentokil.co.uk (position 2 and position 3)
• fantasticservices.com (position 6)
• vpsgroup.com (position 7)

Rentokil Pest Control is a trading division of Rentokil Initial UK Limited. And they have been protecting properties across the UK from pests for over 90 years.

Visit the website.

And, there are around 25 pest control specialisations listed on their website menu:

According to their website:

“Fantastic Services is your one-stop shop for 25+ professional home cleaning and maintenance services, provided within London and the UK.”

Visit the website

And there are around 18 pest control specialisations listed on the website.

Including 8 under the website menu: fantasticservices.com/pest-control. In addition to another 10 specialisations listed on the page: fantasticservices.com/other-pest-treatments.

Despite predominantly being a cleaning and maintenance company, Fantastic Services are one of the top 3 pest control service providers. And this is rather impressive. 

According to their website:

“VPS is a spe­cial­ist provider of vacant, occu­pied and site secu­ri­ty solutions”.

And their services cov­er: 

“ the vacant, unoc­cu­pied and void prop­er­ty life­cy­cle from an ini­tial risk assess­ment, secu­ri­ty, main­te­nance, clean­ing and prepa­ra­tion”.

Visit the website.

The VPS Group website lists their pest control services under the website menu item “Vacant Property”.

And, there are five pest control specialisations listed on their Vacant Property page: vpsgroup.com/vacant-property-services/pest-control-services.

We analysed how well the top 3 competitors optimised their websites for their service keywords related to pest control. And here’s what we found…

Rentokil rank for all their service keywords.

And 25% of all of the website keywords (4,908) are related to the services listed in their website menu.

As such, this means there is an average of 288 related keywords per each service keyword.

However, the most frequent service keyword is “mice” with 768 keyword instances.

Similarly to Rentokil, Fantastic Services also ranks for all their service keywords.

However just 12% of all of the website keywords (2,664) are related to the services listed in their website menu.

And, the most frequent service keyword is “Ant” with 787 keyword instances.

Unlike their top 3 counterparts, VPS Group has 4 service keywords that they do not rank for.

And only 1% of all of the website keywords (9) are related to the services listed in their website menu.

However, like Rentokil, the most frequent service keyword is “Rat” with 9 keyword instances.

Next, we’ll look at the content of each of the top 3 competitors for our targeted keyword “pest control”.

Rentokil’s top page is a service page: rentokil.co.uk/wasps/wasp-nest

And this page generates 7.18% of its website traffic.

Second and third place, respectively, are:

•  rentokil.co.uk/mice/rats-vs-mice (service page)
•  rentokil.co.uk/rats/signs-of-rats (service page)

Overall, these three pages generate 19.11% of the website’s traffic. That’s just under a fifth.

In comparison, Fantastic Service’s top page is its homepage. As it’s not a service page, it performs much better than Rentokil’s top page, generating 17.05% of its website traffic.

Second and third place, respectively, are:

•  fantasticservices.com/domestic-cleaning (service page)
•  fantasticservices.com/end-of-tenancy-cleaning (service page)

These three pages generate 33.5% of the website’s traffic.

On the whole, compared to the top pages of its competitors, VPS is winning. As VPS Group’s top page is its homepage. And this generates almost half (49.22%) of its website traffic.

Second and third place, respectively, are:

•  vpsgroup.com/vacant-property-services/pest-control-services (service page)
•  vpsgroup.com/site-security/rapid-deployment-cctv-tower (service page)

And these three pages combined generate 74.17% of the website’s traffic.

Next, we’ll examine the backlinks of each of the top 3 competitors for our target keyword, “pest control”.

Overall, in June 2013, Rentokil only had 21 backlinks.

And their largest backlink growth occurred between October 2014 and February 2020. During this time they acquired 39,754 backlinks.

However, from February 2020 to October 2020, Rentokil lost 10,761 backlinks.

This was a 26.79% decrease.

Overall, in June 2013, Fantastic Services had just 2 backlinks.

And their largest backlink growth happened between May 2017 and April 2019. During this time they acquired 187,699 backlinks.

However, from April 2019 to December 2019, Fantastic Services lost 32% of their backlinks (120,343 backlinks).

And this equates to a 63.53% decrease.

Despite this, just 10 months later, in October 2020, they had tripled the amount of their backlinks. As a result they increased from 69,055 backlinks to 218,780 backlinks.

This was a 216% increase, pretty impressive.

Overall, in November 2014, VPS Group had 11 backlinks.

And their largest backlink growth happened between February 2016 and August 2019. It was during this period that they acquired 7,687 backlinks.

However, from August 2019 to May 2020, the VPS Group lost 3,496 backlinks.

This was a 43.38% decrease.

From May 2020 and October 2020, they gained 855 backlinks.

Though as it’s an increase of just 18.74%, there is an opportunity here for VPS to work on creating a strong backlink profile. 

We’ve looked at backlinks, so now we’ll dive into all-time traffic growth for each of the top 3.

In January 2012, Rentokil had 32,188 monthly visits.

And, by October 2020, their monthly visits had increased 679% to 250,975.

Five years ago, in April 2015, Fantastic Services had an average of 48 monthly visits.

However, by October 2020, their monthly visits had increased 227,481% to 109,239.

Back in June 2013, VPS Group had 104 monthly visits.

However, by October 2020, their monthly visits had increased 4248% to 4,522.

In November 2019, Rentokil invested the most in paid traffic (£81,188).

And 11 Months later in October 2020, they had reduced their paid traffic investment by 97.73%.

As a result, in October 2020, Fantastic Services became the one investing the most in paid traffic (£10,189).

Overall, in November 2019, Rentokil gained the most top 3 keywords (188).

However, in October 2020, Fantastic Services’ investment in paid traffic gained them 48 keywords.

In November 2019, Rentokil was receiving 7,676 website visits from paid traffic.

However, this reduced dramatically by 84% by October 2020, when they received 1,200 website visits. Evidently, this was due to their reduced investment.

As a result of this, in October 2020, Fantastic Services received the highest amount of website visits (1,299).

Let’s looks at the landscape for display advertising next.

In October 2020, Rentokil display ads were mainly targeting women aged 25 to 44 years old.

Rentokil placed 332 display ads in 26 countries around the world.

Overall, the top 2 countries where they display their ads are:

•  United Kingdom (66% of their display ads)
•  Portugal (5% of their display ads)

And, the vast majority of their display ads were text ads (87%).

Similarly, in October 2020, Fantastic Services display ads were mainly targeting women aged 25 to 44 years old.

Fantastic Services placed 346 display ads in 11 countries around the world.

And, the top 2 countries where they display their ads are:

•  United Kingdom (88% of their display ads)
•  United States (7% of their display ads)

Overall, the vast majority of their display ads were text ads (98%).

In October 2020, VPS Group display ads were mainly targeting women aged  25 to 44 years old.

And, VPS Group only placed 4 display ads that were all text ads, withing the UK.

In conclusion, our SEO competitor analysis report highlights that there is a lot of opportunity for pest control firms in the UK. 

Of course, there is a gap in scale between some of the firms we have looked at. Especially when you consider the UK government and Manchester City Council have .gov domains. As such, this is unsurprising, because search engines infer a lot of value from .gov domains, considering them trustworthy. 

And, while pest control service provider Rentokil currently ranks high, this can always change. In fact, there’s plenty of potential for their competitor’s to take advantage of their weaknesses. 

As demonstrated by Fantastic Services, who received the highest amount of website visits in October 2020 when Rentokil reduced their paid traffic by 84%. As a direct result of Rentokil’s reduced investment, Fantastic Services were able to take the top spot in this area. 

Overall, by replicating the success of the top 3 firms ranking for the keyword “pest control”, others can benefit. So, if you’re a pest control expert, use our analysis to position your firm better and start ranking higher.

However, our reports can help companies learn exactly why their competition is ranking higher than them. Not just pest control service providers. 

In addition, they provide the building blocks of a robust marketing plan that actually works.

If you would like a detailed SEO competitor analysis report of your own, get in touch.

Alternatively, we can help you to build a marketing plan that works for you.

If ‘yes’, you might like to read our website analysis articles where we analyse the website of different companies in detail. Or perhaps you’d like to check out our SEO competitor analysis reports below?

Employment Lawyers in London

Accountants in Manchester 

Removal Companies in London

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