The e-cigarette market sector has quickly grown from nothing, into one of the hardest SERPs to crack from an SEO perspective.

The European market opened up in 2005 when Greg Carson launched the first UK e-cigarette company, “Electro Fag.” Although it didn’t have the most charming name, it led to an explosion of online retailers jumping on the bandwagon.

Since the launch of the UK market, there are now over 250 independent suppliers of e-cigarettes.

In 2012, the UK market broke the £100 million barrier, and by the end of 2015, it is predicted to be worth £340 million. There is an estimated 1.3 million e-cigarette users in the UK and market trends predict there will be over 2 million e-cigarette users by the end of 2015.

The trend is clear and the graph below shows how quickly the market has grown:

E-cigarette retailers have a wide scope for their digital marketing techniques. Since the earliest market boom, we have seen a rapid growth in e-cigarette phone apps, affiliate sites and even promotion via gaming websites.

We spoke to James Dunworth from E-Cigarette Direct, who gave us some quick feedback on the industry:

How do you currently focus your digital efforts?

“Our efforts are currently focussed on content, email, social media and affiliate marketing.”

Do you plan to make any changes to your digital marketing in 2015?

“We are planning a major website revamp to both improve the look and feel of the website and make it more mobile friendly.”

Is there any issue with legislation that slows down your digital marketing strategies?

“Bans on advertising on Google and Facebook as well as elsewhere have steered us towards a stronger emphasis towards content, affiliate marketing and social media.”

How important is the brand versus the being found for generic search term?

“Brand is very important for us as conversion rates are far higher.”

MarketScout Report into the e-cigarette online market

We decided to take a look into the industry to find out who has the largest organic search market share.

We have filtered out all the branded search terms like “blucig” and “totally wicked” so this analysis only focuses on the generic search terms from the e-cigarette market.

We have used www.totallywicked-eliquid.co.uk as the prime domain for the analysis.

Totally Wicked are leading the way, with ukecigstore.com and VIP not far behind, so it is clear to see that this sector is currently a three horse race.

Taking a look at the off-site equity (backlink profiles), it is clear there have been some interesting link building techniques carried out in the past, which has clearly led to several casualties from Google Penguin.

The hard part for e-cigarette companies is getting content placed, as 75% of webmasters decline content related to e-cigarettes.

Publishing companies such as Vocus, which owns the largest network of news publishing websites states that, “PRWeb does not allow releases that promote the sale or use of Electronic Cigarettes.”

As publishers move away from promoting e-cigarette companies, this has forced marketing teams to use link building techniques that can potentially cause penalties.

Due to the limitation of out-reachable websites, this market’s topical trust flow is very sporadic.

The only site with a genuine topical trust flow is www.vipelectroniccigarette.co.uk.

As James stated earlier, the focus on content and social outreach has been a major focus for their team, and this shows in the amount of individuals that have shared content from their site.

The company has been shared nearly 12,000 times over the past year alone, and incredibly, their social market share out-weighs all the other e-cigarette companies combined.

One piece written by James stands out the most:

This piece is perfectly written from a search, social and link earning point of view. From a user perspective, it gives clear, factual and proven data, so users are able to make their own choice.

The best result for any content marketing effort is to ensure that industry peers take note and share.

This hit home with all the right influencers and had the potential to reach 52,000 twitter followers.

It goes to show that sometimes, simple, factual content can beat fancy graphics and fluffy concepts.

Summary

As stated in the beginning, the e-cigarette market is a tough SERP to crack. In fact, for the term “e-cigarettes,” there are only seven results, and out of these seven, only four of the results actually sell e-cigarettes.

It goes to show that for any company to succeed in this sector, they need to choose their battles wisely, and there are plenty of e-cigarette phrases with a low quality SERP, where a little bit of clever on-site work, and a few good quality links will be enough to push onto the top page.

If you would like a full copy of this MarketScout report please email our team via the contact form.