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Median Alexa rank
121,296
Average Alexa rank
239,568
Average Alex rank for overlap sites
523,623
Median ahrefs # KW in Top 100
209,500
Average ahrefs # KW in Top 100
215,430
Median ahrefs organic traffic
472,000
Average ahrefs organic traffic
651,880
Average ahrefs Traffic/KW Ratio
3.48
Median semrush # KW in Top 100
250,774
Average semrush # KW in Top 100
251,410
Median semrush organic traffic
798,838
Average semrush organic traffic
921,095
Average semrush Traffic/KW Ratio
3.95
Note: it seems that semrush is computing more data than ahrefs, which would explain the discrepancy between the estimates, even if the proportions are usually comparable.
The purpose of this short piece is to study the state of the Switching Assistants market in France, active in the Finance & Utilities (energy, phone, internet) verticals. Those companies help customers find cheaper alternatives to their existing contracts. Switching Assistants are the new generation of price comparison sites.
For each company, we’ve collected up to 71 data points from various sources: whois, ahrefs, Semrush, alexa, Similarweb, Apollo, Crunchbase, Zoom Info, WebsiteIQ and the main social media outlets. The data estimates are correct at time of writing (Oct 26, 2021) and naturally subject to evolve. We invite you to use the same tools to update the figures.
Click on the thumbnails for details
Organic Traffic Evolution
This vertical has not experienced any major organic traffic increase over the last 12 months, with 3 sites even losing traffic. Both the median and average organic traffic change # are just above 1 (1.12) for the L12M. It seems to be a mature / not so dynamic vertical in terms of growth. All companies featured in this analysis have enough traffic (> 50K) to be reported by Similarweb. The average Alexa rank is pretty high: 239,568 (especially if you consider that this sample is limited to French speaking players). We don’t see much headroom in this vertical.
Funding
8 companies out of 10 haven’t reported any VC funding. The most funded entity in the report, Empruntis, raised $32M 15 years ago. The funds at their disposal haven’t translated in a strong online presence. They’re ranked #9 out of 10. Empruntis’s business strength lies in its network of 158 agencies. Interestingly the other VC-funded entity, Pretto, occupies the last place in our list in terms of organic traffic. Note: apparently Je Change raised capital in 2016, but we could not find the actual figures, hence the N/A mention.
Social Activity
We haven’t noticed any significant social media activity in this vertical. The most active company on Facebook is Selectra, with just over 50,000 fans. They’re also the most active player on Youtube in terms of organic achievement, with 7430 subscribers. 8 out of 10 reviewed companies are investing in FB ads, 5 spend money on Instagram advertising.
There’s not much love for social media ad creatives in this vertical. The most popular FB ad creative, by Les Furets, garnered 4,247 likes. The most popular IG ad creative, by Le Lynx, didn’t even get 10 likes.
Two companies, Les Furets and Le Lynx, seem to have invested some efforts in Youtube ads, Les Furets boasting an average of 419,939 views per video (61 uploads) and Le Lynx 106,161 views per video (61 uploads).
Paid Search
5 companies out of 10 are investing more than $20,000 per month in SEM. According to semrush estimates, Le Lynx tops the list, followed by Les Furets and MeilleurTaux. The average spend per paid visit (CPC) is around $3 in this vertical.
Branding & Content Marketing
Thanks to a good mix of branded & info queries, most reviewed switching assistants report a strong KW yield (above 1), with an average traffic to KW ratio on ahrefs of 3.48 and 3.95 on semrush. Boosted by their Exact Match Domain branding, MeilleurTaux boasts a 10x traffic to KW ratio on semrush, followed by Empruntis (5.26) and Selectra (4.04).
In terms of branded KW volume (# of searches per month), the strongest player is MeilleurTaux (192,000, ranking first for “Meilleur Taux”) and the weakest Je Change (1300 searches per month).
Boost PPC efforts
There’s a huge gap between the heavy spenders and the second part of the leaderboard. Companies like Je Change, Réassurez-moi, Selectra and Empruntis should boost their SEM efforts, focusing on long tail / less competitive terms.
Create a sales funnel with contest, freebies & promotions
As they say “The Value Is The List”. According to Similarweb data, there’s a huge difference between the most active and the least active players in terms of mail traffic. MeilleurTaux generates 3.32% of its traffic from email whereas Je Change doesn’t seem to generate any significant traffic from this source (0%), at least not enough to surface on Similarweb traffic breakdown.
Besides your usual customers, you should also try to build lists with contests, freebies and promotions. The cost of (re)marketing those users via an email funnel is negligible. This should be one of your priorities: be creative!
Own the space on Youtube, leverage your videos on Tik Tok and Instagram Reels
Money management-related videos are popular on Youtube (how to make money, how to save money,…), if properly produced (not mere “in your face” ad creatives using royalty-free footage). There’s an opportunity to stand out from the competition for those investing serious recurring content efforts on Youtube, directly and via a network of influencers. We could easily see one of the listed players develop a 50K-subscriber community.
You can repurpose your video content in a native vertical format for Tik Tok and Instagram Reels.
Double down on info content
Most reviewed companies are already pretty active on the inbound front, generating a substantial part of their traffic from organic queries. But it’s a constant arms race. MoneyVox, mainly a blog, ranks higher than 4 more sophisticated platforms, thanks to a huge stock of info content (185,000 indexed pages).
Run permanent retargeting campaigns on FB & Google
Once you’ve attracted someone on your site and they’ve fired the FB and Google pixels, you can start to retarget them. This will increase your conversion potential, allowing you to increase your efforts at the top of the funnel (search, content).
As in every KPICrunch study, we highlight a selection of the essential KPIs in a series of leaderboards: the Top 10 Best Ranked Tools on Alexa, the best performing sites from an organic perspective and the most active players on Youtube.
The smaller your Alexa rank the higher your web traffic will be.
This leaderboard is based on the “Organic Traffic To KW Ratio” we calculate using ahrefs data. Those sites have either a very strong authority (which translates in many branded queries with a high traffic yield) OR an effective content marketing strategy covering a wide and deep array of relevant topics. Click on the widgets for details.
Yoube activity is a relevant signal to evaluate the intensity of a brand’s content marketing efforts. High view counts don’t always translate in high subscriber numbers since some of those players can rely on paid traffic to accelerate their distribution.
