It has always baffled me why insurance companies don’t invest heavily in SEO. After all, there are essentially two ways for a customer to find and purchase an insurance policy:
- The Aggregator Route: The customer heads to a comparison site (like GoCompare or Compare the Market) to find and compare different providers.
- The Direct Search: The customer searches for insurance online, clicks a Google-recommended result, and gets a quote directly on the insurance broker’s website.
It’s a no-brainer, right?
I have various opinions on why this is, largely the amount of poor cowboy SEO agencies in the UK who can’t deliver, don't understand the game, and sell extremely watered-down versions of SEO.
The truth is, if you can accurately reverse-engineer the SERPs and make it clear to the client from the beginning what kind of investment will be needed, it can be very predictable. Most agencies slip up here; they’re either too scared to tell the client the real cost in case they lose the sale, or they’re simply unaware themselves.
Let’s look at Marshmallow. Founded by Alexander Kent-Braham, Oliver Kent-Braham, and David Goaté, this brand is a powerhouse.
They’ve raised upwards of £170 million (pushing a $2bn valuation recently) and have built one of the most amazing-looking brands in the UK insurance market. We’re talking a beautifully visual brand, an excellent website, and an endless amount of branded traffic. People actually search for the name "Marshmallow."
However, search for one of their products or services, such as van insurance or car insurance and they are nowhere to be seen in the Google search results (and ultimeltey LLM's and AI) . This is an all-too-common problem across the UK insurance market, but a brand with the presence of marshmallow could make a real dent in the UK insurance search results.
The Traffic Blind Spot
I bet if you asked Marshmallow about their SEO, they’d think it’s great. They probably see a massive spike in "Organic Traffic" in their analytics and pat themselves on the back.
But here’s the problem: They are larlgey unaware that ranking for your own brand name is a given. If someone types "Marshmallow Insurance" into Google, of course you’re going to appear. That’s not SEO success; that’s just having a name.
Real SEO is about ranking for non-branded commercial queries the terms people search when they haven’t decided who to buy from yet.
The Numbers They’re Missing
Let’s look at the actual UK search volume for the heavy hitters:
- Car Insurance: 470,000 searches per month
- Van Insurance: 70,000 searches per month
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Those figures don't even include:
- High-Intent Sub-terms: Phrases like "business van insurance" or "personal van insurance."
- Informational Traffic: Thousands of "how-to" and "guide" searches that lead directly to a sale.
Instead of capturing this, brokers commit to paying hundreds of thousands per month to aggregator platforms like Compare the Market and GoCompare.
Investing in SEO doesn't just "get you on Google" it fixes your entire business model:
- Direct Sales: You keep 100% of the customer relationship from day one.
- Increased Aggregator Conversion: When a customer sees five similar prices on a comparison site, they pick the brand they recognize. If they’ve already seen you three times during their prior research on Google, you win that click every time.
- Lower CPA: Your Cost Per Acquisition drops because you aren't paying a "finder's fee" to an aggregator for every single lead.