Online Pharmacies - Embryo's SEO competitor analysis
Introduction
Online Pharmacies, like a lot of industries diverting to online, are becoming increasingly popular due to their convenience, cost-saving and privacy for consumers. But where there is demand, there is competition, and knowing how to take their piece of the pie with a good digital marketing strategy is the key to being successful online. I’ve been taking a look into some of the top players in the UK online pharmacy world (excluding the likes of Boots, Superdrug etc due to their good brand reputations) to identify who is doing great from an organic search perspective.
Organic Visibility
This graph shows the search visibility of the brands over the past 12 months, calculated by taking a number of SEO efforts into account including keyword reach, their ranking positions, content quality, backlink profile and various technical factors. The Independent Pharmacy was massively storming the lead up until February 2024, where they have experienced a colossal decline. Pharmacy2u, Click2Pharmacy and Chemist4u (that’s a mouthful!) all come in with relatively similar search visibility, followed by Simple Pharmacy Online and finally Cloud Pharmacy. The general trend of the graph is most companies seeing declines or stagnant periods, which of course, isn't ideal. Let's take a deeper look into why!
How does the 1st page look?
Using Embryo’s in-house tool, Intermingle, we can see how the 1st page of Google looks when searching for terms surrounding online pharmacies. The first search is the largest and very top level, and the results show a few brands in this analysis, alongside some larger brands such as Boots and Lloyds. The other searches (more exploratory, and potentially someone in the researching stage meaning the buyer intent will be amplified) are a better place for these brands to be. So, how do they get here? Creating helpful and meaningful content answering these exploratory questions will ensure these brands are present at all stages of the buyer journey, thus leading to increased sales.
The likes of Click2Pharmacy and Chemist4u are nowhere to be seen on these searches, highlighting that this should be a focus for these businesses.
Pharmacy2u
Taking a closer look into Pharmacy2u’s performance over the past 12 months, their growth is inconsistent and they have seen a number of peaks and troughs. The most noticeable is the first decline on the graph in October 2023 where they lost over half of their traffic (potentially due to Google updates). They have focused on increasing that but have since seen another decline in recent weeks. A deeper analysis is needed here to determine how to protect the visibility of the website going forward.
Pharmacy2u currently ranks for 61,587 keywords, with 4.5% on page one.
Simple Online Pharmacy
Looking into Simple Online Pharmacy, their visibility has been stagnant for most of the year up until June 2024 when they experienced a large decline and haven’t managed to recover just yet. Again, this brand would need to do a deeper dive into the reason why, and come up with a solution quickly.
Simple Online Pharmacy ranks for 44,652 keywords with 5.5% on page one.
Cloud Pharmacy
Cloud Pharmacy have the lowest search visibility in this analysis and unfortunately, it has been declining since March 2023. Hopefully, this analysis can highlight the importance of SEO for Cloud Pharmacy and why they should invest if they want to compete with the likes of The Independent Pharmacy and Pharmcy2u.
Cloud Pharmacy ranks for 27,872 keywords with 4% on page one.
The Independent Pharmacy
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The Independent Pharmacy just about have the highest visibility in this analysis, despite their enormous decline in visibility in the past 9 months. They have lost more than half of their large amount of traffic which must have had an impact on their revenue. I’d be keen to explore further with this company to identify what has happened and why their visibility has declined so much in such a short amount of time.
The Independent Pharmacy ranks for a huge 110,082 keywords but with only 4% on page one.
Click2Pharmacy
Click2Pharmacy is one of the only brands in this analysis that have experienced some good, solid growth in the past 12 months. They have had a slight decline in the past few months but in general, their growth is impressive!
Click2Pharmacy ranks for 31,768 keywords with 8% on page one.
Chemist4u
Chemist4u has seen a consistent decline this year with no growth. A high number of these brands use Google ads to bring in customers therefore I am wondering if they have focused all efforts into this channel. Google ads are amazing but they work hand in hand with SEO, both channels should be explored for long-term growth.
Chemist4u ranks for 76,262 keywords with 4% on page one.
Organic Keywords
The keyword count for these brands is quite varied, The Independent Pharmacy has an incredible amount of keywords on the website with over 110,000, despite this they have lost a lot of keywords over the past 12 months following their drop in visibility, which I’d be keen to explore further. Chemist4u has the second highest amount of keywords with just under 80,000. Followed by Pharmacy2u with 60,000+, Simple Online Pharmacy with 44,000+ and Click2Pharmacy with 31,000. Finally, Cloud Pharmacy have just shy of 28,000.
Referring Domains
Surprisingly, The Independent Pharmacy doesn’t have as many unique links as some of the other brands, despite their reign in the rest of this analysis. Simple Online Pharmacy has the most with over 4,300 followed by Chemist4u with 3,500 and Pharmacy2u with 3,000. The Independent Pharmacy comes next with 1,800, followed by Click2Pharmacy with 1,200 and Cloud Pharmacy with just over 1,000. Just because a website has a lot of links, it doesn't mean they are all good quality and adding value therefore a backlink audit would need to be undertaken to analyse how beneficial these referring domains are.
Domain Rank
Domain rank is a great indicator that a website is performing well, and takes into account multiple SEO tactics to show how authoritative a site is. Most of these DRs are brilliant, especially Pharmacy2u (63), The Independent Pharmacy (59), Chemist4u (58) and Simple Online Pharmacy (56). There is room for improvement with Click2Pharmacy (36) and Cloud Pharmacy (24) as their DRs are quite low.
Summary
When a company operates mainly online, it is vital to keep an eye on what channels competitors are using in order to bring in business and ensure they are present in front of potential customers. Hopefully, this analysis has highlighted for these companies where the gaps and opportunities are for optimisation and growth in organic search. Usually, when I conduct these reports, there is a clear winner however The Independent Pharmacy’s recent decline gives an opportunity for other brands to push their strategy and dominate!
I will say that all of these brands have room for improvement with their SEO strategy.
Drop me an email or LinkedIn message if this is something you would like to explore further.