The online sweet wholesale market is buzzing with competition, but which brands are winning the SEO game and attracting the most organic traffic?
In this blog, we’ll unwrap the performance of five leading sweet wholesale websites and dive into their SEO strategies to see who’s gaining the most digital visibility. As the demand for bulk confectionery surges, mastering SEO is essential for staying at the top of the search rankings.
From keyword-rich content to technical optimisations, each website brings a unique flavour to the table. Are these brands leveraging SEO like a well-crafted recipe, or is there room for improvement? We’ll compare how well they perform in areas like domain authority, backlink profile, and organic traffic, exploring who’s taking full advantage of SEO’s sweet potential.
In this analysis, we will be using the brands of Hancocks, Wholesale Sweets, Bulk Wholesale Sweets, Appleton Sweets and Sweets and Treats Wholesale to understand who is performing the best in terms of SEO.
Organic Traffic Analysis
The graph below displays the percentage of branded and non-branded traffic to each website.
Appleton Sweets, Bulk Wholesale Sweets and Sweets and Treats Wholesale have the ideal split between branded and non-branded traffic. It appears that they have the visibility for keywords for new customers to find them as well as repeat customers finding them through search.
On the other hand, Wholesale Sweets have 100% non-branded traffic. Although positive, it may signal that there are less returning customers through organic search and may be coming through other means.
Hancocks have a smaller split of branded and non-branded traffic. To create a larger split, we would recommend posting more top, middle and bottom-of-the-funnel blogs. We can see that they tend to publish industry and company news on the subject matter of new products.
Number of Keywords
The graphic below shows the number of keywords each website is ranking for.
Hancocks are ranking for the most keywords out of the brands we are analysing. This is surprising given their split between branded and non-branded keywords.
Sweets and Treats are ranking for the least keywords. However, they do not have a blog on their website, which could rapidly improve the number of keywords they rank for. Blogs provide informational content and improve the internal linking structure of websites, which assists in ranking. In contrast to this, Wholesale Sweets has a well-thought-out blog page, featuring SEO-led articles. This has contributed greatly to the 23,000 keywords they are ranking for.
Bulk Wholesale Sweets and Appleton Sweets are similar in terms of the number of keywords they are ranking for.
If we compare the category page of ‘Retro Wholesale Sweets’ on Hancocks and Sweets and Treats, we can get an insight into the differences in keyword ranking.
Below is the Sweets and Treats ‘Wholesale Retro Sweets’ category page:
Below is the Hancocks ‘Retro Pick n Mix Sweets’ category page:
There is a big difference in terms of design and user experience. Both of these elements contribute to keyword ranking. Hancocks have a clear category name of ‘Retro Pick n Mix Sweets’, which is associated with the products. However, Sweets and Treats fails to do this and their title is simply ‘Wholesale Sweets’.
Google can now rank pages based on website page design. This has most likely impacted the number of keywords Sweets and Treats are ranking for.
We recommend Sweets and Treats transform their category page design to improve the usability and keywords attached to this page.
Organic Visibility
To compare the online wholesale sweet stores’ keyword rankings, the bar chart below helps us understand where they place in search results.
Hancocks has the most keywords ranking in positions 1-3 which is no surprise given their page design and well-rounded SEO strategy. They have a vast navigation bar with numerous categories from keyword research. However, they do have numerous keywords ranking in positions 4-10. We advise that they work on improving these low-hanging fruit keywords for some easy wins.
Little to no users click through to the third page and over in search results, which means the majority of keywords Sweets and Treats are ranking for aren’t being seen by users. This means they are limiting the organic traffic to their website. We would advise Sweets and Treats to work on improving the keyword ranking of category pages by creating a content strategy to improve internal linking.
Below we have displayed the volume of organic traffic each month for the last 12-months going to each website. This data is from SEMRush.
The clear winner here is Hancocks, outperforming each brand by far. However, they had a drop in organic traffic between April and June 2024. This is most likely a result of the Google Algorithm Core Update, which was finally rolled out on the 19th of April. The amount of organic traffic seems to have recovered in June.
Wholesale Sweets also had a drop in organic traffic around the same time as Hancocks, which again could be a result of the Core Update in April.
Appleton Sweets had a small spike in organic traffic in February 2024, which dropped in March 2024. Upon further research, they were ranking on page one for keywords like ‘haribo sweets’ and ‘pez’ leading to valuable category pages. These keywords have now decreased in ranking to the third page and over. This will have significantly impacted organic traffic and revenue, as they have high search volumes with intent to purchase.
Sweets and Treats and Bulk Wholesale Sweets have the least amount of organic traffic per month.
Bulk Wholesale Sweets can quickly improve their organic traffic by implementing an SEO-led content strategy for their blog posts. The articles they currently post are not researched for keywords beforehand and tend to be company news about new product releases. Titles like ‘Top 5 Sweets for Wedding Pick n Mix Stations’ would benefit their organic traffic and amount of organic revenue.
There is plenty of room for Sweets and Treats to improve their category pages for keywords. There are several basic issues such as H1s failing to contain the page’s target keyword.
Backlink Analysis
The below graph displays the number of referring domains each brand has pointing to their website.
Hancocks is once again outperforming the other wholesale sweet brands regarding the number of referring domains. However, many referring domains aren’t always a positive sign. The quality of the domain and relevancy is an important factor.
Below is an example of the spammy URLs which are linking to Hancocks.
The above websites are linking multiple times to Hancocks, in some cases 615 times. To improve their linking profile, we would recommend implementing a link-building strategy with relevant blogger websites to improve authority.
Backlink Domain Authority
The below graph displays the breakdown of referring domains pointing to each brand along with their domain authority.
Hancocks has a very high amount of backlinks from low-authority domains. This does support the idea of Hancocks having numerous spammy websites linking to them.
The higher the domain authority of the referring domain, the better the quality of the backlink. It is important to note the relevancy of the link matters too.
Hancocks has five domains with authority of between 81-100 linking to them. These domains can be found below:
Hancocks were featured in an article by The Sun called ‘B&M is selling an advent calendar with retro Barratt sweets including refreshers and fruit salad’. In this article, it included a link to their ‘Swizzels Advent Calendar’ product page. It is difficult to obtain backlinks from major news outlets in the UK, so this link is very successful.
Appleton Sweets looks to be taking part in an outreach strategy. They have a positive amount of backlinks from domains with an authority of between 21-40.
As a general comment, we would recommend that each of the brands in this analysis, reach out to industry-relevant bloggers to improve the number of referring domains with an authority score of 30 or above.
Backlinks Over the Past Year
The graph below displays the number of backlinks each brand has had every month over the past year.
Hancocks has rapidly increased the number of backlinks they have, since February 2024. This could signify when they started to optimise their website for SEO to gain natural backlinks, or when they started a small blogger outreach strategy.
Two brands whose backlink profiles have not changed in the past year are Sweets and Treats and Bulk Wholesale Sweets. In order to compete with their competitors, they need to engage in link-building activities.
Domain Authority
The graphic below displays the domain authority of each website we are analysing.
Domain authority is calculated using several metrics, such as:
- Link power
- Organic traffic
- Spam factors
These metrics are taken into consideration to evaluate overall SEO performance.
It is no surprise that Hancocks have the highest domain authority, given their website design, backlinks and range of category pages.
Sweets and Treats has the lowest domain authority. This can be significantly improved by engaging in various SEO tasks to assist with SEO performance.
Wholesale Sweets, Bulk Wholesale Sweets and Appleton Sweets all have a similar domain authority.
Analysis Round-Up
Hancocks is the website with the best SEO performance in this analysis. However, they do have some improvements to make with their link-building activity and backlink optimisations. Their range of product categories with well-thought-out designs has been developed with keyword research in mind.
The other four brands have a long way to go to outperform Hancocks.
Every e-commerce website wants to be the best in their industry in all marketing channels like PPC and SEO. However, it takes a lot of work researching and auditing to discover opportunities and quick wins to boost SEO performance.
At Fly High Media, this is what we do best. We have the knowledge, skills and experience to improve organic traffic to each website in this analysis so they are the best in their industry.
