Battle of the Brands: Ultra Violette vs Naked Sundays
When it comes to next-generation sunscreen brands, who does SEO better?
Up until a few years ago, sunscreen was a category that was boring and in major need of a makeover.
Sure, the Slip, Slop, Slap campaign was effective, but sunscreen wasn’t seen as part of an everyday beauty routine.
Just something you applied before playing sport or going to the beach.
In the last couple of years, sunscreen has had a glow-up.
And there are two sunscreen brands that have always stood out: Ultra Violette and Naked Sundays.
Who is Ultra Violette?
Photo courtesy of Ultra Violette
Founded by Ava Matthews and Bec Jefferd, Ultra Violette is leading a new generation of Australian-made sunscreen.
Prioritising comfort and efficacy, they emphasise UV protection for anti-aging.
TGA-approved and non-pilling, their SPF politely considers your other skincare and makeup products, feeling comfortable enough to wear daily and containing skin-sweetening ingredients.
Who is Naked Sundays?
Photo courtesy of Mecca
Naked Sundays was founded by Samantha Brett. Vegan, cruelty-free, and made in Australia, their products boast zero whitecast, skin-loving ingredients, and high-performance SPF compliance with the country's stringent regulations.
Samantha's experience as a television news reporter inspired the launch, driven by the need for SPF reapplication under heavy makeup and harsh studio lights.
Witnessing colleagues' struggles with skin cancer, she collaborated with makeup artists and skin experts to create a versatile SPF solution.
Naked Sundays catered to women seeking effective sun protection that seamlessly integrated into their beauty routines.
Both have fantastic visuals, a clear brand identity and personality and clever wording with many trademarked terms.
So, how do they measure up when it comes to SEO*?
The market
Searches for sunscreen have been increasing since 2004 but really started picking up speed in 2018/19.
Currently, there are approximately 18,100 searches for the term 'sunscreen' in Australia every month.
For all 'sunscreen' related keywords, that increases to over 1.1 million searches every month.
According to SEMrush, the keyword difficulty for 'sunscreen' is 49/100 - to be honest, I'm surprised it's not more.
The keywords
Ultra Violette
Ranks for 6172 keywords with around 26.2% on the first page of Google.
In terms of keyword intent, 32.9% are informational, 9.6% are navigational, 25.7% are commercial, and 25.7% are transactional.
The estimated average monthly cost to rank for the organic keywords in Google Ads is $24.2k.
53.5% of traffic is from branded keywords, while 46.5% are non-branded.
'Ultra violette' gets approximately 9.9k searches/month, and 'ultra violette sunscreen' receives 6.6k searches/month.
They rank #3 for the keyword ‘sunscreen’
Whatever Ultra Violette did in November 2021 really escalated their SEO results.
Naked Sundays
Ranks for 756 keywords with around 15.4% on the first page of Google.
In terms of keyword intent, 44.6% are informational, 3% are navigational, 12.1% are commercial, and 40.2% are transactional.
The estimated average monthly cost to rank for the organic keywords in Google Ads is $15.6k.
87.9% of traffic is from branded keywords, while 12.1% are non-branded.
'Naked Sundays' gets approximately 4.4k searches/month, and 'naked sundays sunscreen' receives 4.4k searches/month.
It appears they don’t rank for the keyword ‘sunscreen’
Winner of this round - Ultra Violette
Ultra Violette ranks for significantly more keywords than Naked Sundays and has more brand name searches.
While the Google Ads cost is purely an estimate, I am surprised that Naked Sundays would have such a high cost despite rankings for fewer keywords.
Interestingly, Naked Sundays has a larger organic presence in the US compared to its Australian presence, while Ultra Violette ranks better in Australia compared to the US.
It’s also important to note that it appears Ultra Violette launched their site in January 2019 and Naked Sundays in Feb 2021.
The website
Ultra Violette
Domain authority of 39
Uses the .com.au version of their site as the main site.
The mobile site has a First Contentful Paint (measures the time from when the user first navigated to the page to when any part of the page's content is rendered on the screen) of 2.7s and 0.9s on the desktop
Naked Sundays
Domain authority of 35
Uses the .com version of their site as the main site.
The mobile site has a First Contentful Paint of 8.7s and 2.1s on the desktop
It appears Naked Sundays used to have a US subdomain but have redirected it to the .com site.
Winner of this round - Ultra Violette but only just
The sites have a similar authority score, and both sites have slow mobile load times.
Neither site owns the alternative of their domain name. The .com.au version of Naked Sundays is for sale (I would recommend they buy it, but I suspect the owner of it is asking for a criminal amount of money to sell it.
The .com for Ultra Violette is an actual automotive brand. While I don't think Ultra Violette is too badly disadvantaged by not owning the alternative domain, Naked Sundays are in a better position because they have the option of acquiring their alternative domain despite how much it costs.
The on-page
Ultra Violette
Ultra Violette has a great, optimised title tag and meta description, which includes their USPs and target keywords.
They have optimised most of their category title tags and meta descriptions and included a short amount of copy at the top of their category page and a longer amount at the bottom.
Customers can shop based on three areas; product type, skin type and formula. They also have bonus categories in the footer that people can use to shop for specific items.
They write a regular blog with a mix of brand news and informative content.
Two blogs stand out to me as being extremely successful on search - their pregnancy safe blog and breaking down the UV index blog - as they both rank for a lot of informational intent keywords.
Their pregnancy blog is a great example of being able to rank well without writing 3000 words of boring content.
A snapshot of keyword rankings for their pregnancy sunscreen blog
Naked Sundays
Naked Sundays include their target keyword and USPs in their title tag and meta description.
They’ve chosen to highlight the “Australian-made” aspect of their product.
However, their title tag and meta description are getting cut off as they’re too long, which has the potential to affect CTR.
Also, Google is choosing to display an alternative meta description to the one they’ve written.
They display some of their product categories in the main menu so users can navigate directly to the category they want. They have fewer categories to choose from and have minimal on-page copy on category pages.
When I explored the Naked Sundays blog, I found it only had one post. However, I discovered more blog URLs when I was analysing their keywords. They’re not ranking highly for many informational keywords. The highest is ‘pip edwards naked’, which relates to an interview with Pip Edwards - but when I tried to view it, I landed on a 404 page - it looks like someone has been fiddling with the website.
Winner of this round - Ultra Violette
The backlinks
Ultra Violette
1.3k referring domains
10.9k backlinks
55% of backlinks are no follow
70% of referring domains have an authority score of 0-10
2% of referring domains have an authority score above 71
Naked Sundays
1.2k referring domains
36.5k backlinks
66% of backlinks are no follow
77% of referring domains have an authority score of 0-10
3% of referring domains have an authority score above 71
Winner of this round - Ultra Violette
While Naked Sundays has a larger number of backlinks, Ultra Violette has a larger number of referring domains, which is what matters more. In terms of the profile, they have backlinks from sites with similar authority scores. Naked Sundays does have backlinks with better authority scores from top-tier sites like Forbes and CNN, which is something Ultra Violette could try to emulate. But Ultra Violette has more referring domains from beauty and fitness sites that are in the same industry as these brands.
Ok, so there’s a clear winner…
Congratulations to Ultra Violette. I’m highly impressed with their SEO strategy and execution. Not only are they nailing their SEO, but their eCommerce, brand, PR, and social strategy are solid, too.
But all is not lost for Naked Sundays. They’ve achieved great things in a short amount of time.
Here’s what I recommend they do to improve their SEO position.
Do further keyword research to identify new keywords they could be targeting
Optimise title tags and meta descriptions for all categories
Reorganise the menu and create new categories to match how people search (e.g. by body part, by ingredients, by skin type)
Add copy to category pages
Add more internal links throughout website copy
Improve the site speed
Use keyword research to find long tail keywords to target for blogs and ensure blogs are housed correctly.
Get in touch with Sunday Best, an eCommerce SEO agency that could really help!**
Ultra Violette recently raised $15 million to go global. If this case study shows anything, it’s that investing in SEO as part of a holistic marketing and brand strategy means you’ll grow faster.
I truly believe that the best SEO aims to get brands searched for, not just found. Ultra Violette has both of those covered.
And that’s why they’re fast becoming an iconic Australian brand.
