The Top Domains and Content for CRM software in 2025

From:

Charlie Williams

Published: 24.04.2025

This month, SectorWatch is heading back into the world of CRMs to see whose pipeline is capturing prime positions in Google’s search results—and which ones still need a little nurturing to climb to the top.

We’re looking for brands whose SEO strategy is truly connecting with both customers and search engines. Who’s building the strongest funnel for organic success? And who has lost their customer’s contact details?

In 2023, we funnelled our analysis of the UK search market for CRMs to find who was building leads and who wasn’t connecting with Google.

The customer relationship management (CRM) software market continues to evolve, making it the perfect candidate to revisit in our latest SectorWatch analysis. With the CRM market continuing to grow, we want to nurture our understanding of the dominant players and what type of content works for them.

The global CRM market is projected to be $98.84 billion in 2025, growing to $262.74 billion by 2032. This unglamorous software market is big business.

It is not just enterprise businesses either. Approximately 45% of SMBs used CRM software in 2024 compared to 35% in 2022. It’s no surprise when you consider some research suggests that CRM software pays back $8.71 for every $1 spent.

CRM tools have moved from “nice-to-have” to “mission-critical” status, and we see new names in the market building prospects.

The CRM market has also been in the SEO spotlight recently, thanks to the analysis that HubSpot, one of the most famous CRM names, has lost 80% of its organic traffic, though, as some have pointed out, this might not be as drastic an issue as it might appear.

For this 2025 update, we’ve refreshed our keyword set to reflect current market terminology and search behaviours, allowing us to chart the rising pipelines of queries trending up in demand over recent months.

The top domains in the UK for CRMs

So, who manages to catch Google’s attention and who needs to brush up on their lead-generation tactics?

We curated 329 keywords with a ‘do’ (commercial or transactional) intent and 345 with a ‘know’ (informational) intent to act as a sample of some of the most popular searches. Based on those keyword sets, here are the winning domains:

Do searches:

1. salesforce.com (1st in 2023)
2. hubspot.com (2nd)
3. zoho.com (7th)

Know searches:

1. salesforce.com (1st in 2023)
2. zendesk.co.uk (16th)
3. techtarget.com (5th)

Top 20 domains for transactional (‘do’) searches for CRMs: 

Top 20 domains for informational (‘know’) searches for CRMs: 

What’s trending in the CRM search market?

By analyzing our curated keywords and TrendWatch data, we can monitor CRM software search demand patterns. With our dashboard configured for market trends, we’re charting the rising pipelines of queries increasing in demand over recent months or multiple years.

• crm software
• what is crm
• small business crm
• what does crm stand for
• crm platforms
• crm tools
• crm software examples
• crm full form
• customer relationship management for real estate
• crm programme
• crm shopify
• customer relationship management open source
• crm for health care
• crm email marketing

Many of these topics have multiple keyword variants with the same user intent, which are all increasing in demand.

If you’d like insight into more search trends and the back-story of those rising keyword searches, subscribe to TrendWatch, the monthly newsletter from the SISTRIX Data Journalism Team.

The top URLs for CRM software

When you create a keyword list in SISTRIX, you don’t just see which domains are closing the deal in search. You also get insight into various useful metrics and breakdowns, including which individual pages are sealing the relationship with potential customers and leading the sales funnel in visibility.

Content examples: What type of content is performing?

Having thoroughly prospected Google’s UK search results for the winning domains for CRMs, we have some takeaways about the types of sites ranking:

• CRM providers dominate ‘do’ rankings: Established CRM names occupy most of the top positions, reflecting a clear preference for well-known, subscription-based software solutions among UK businesses
  • Recognisable names like Salesforce and HubSpot are at the top of the pile, indicating that searchers often gravitate toward well-known solutions offering broad features
  • Zoho similarly secures a strong place, benefiting from its diverse service suite and approachable price tiers, features making it a favourite for small to medium-sized enterprises
  • We also see Zendesk (a customer support-oriented CRM platform), Pipedrive, Capsule, Sage, Keap, SuiteCRM, Kaviyo (B2C focused) and other CRMs in the top 25
• Reviews and roundups also do well for commercial keywords: Even with a tight set of commercial searches, Google feels this is a sector where guidance on the best CRM option, or even what a CRM actually does, is useful among the ranking software providers
  • We see review-focused publishers like PCMag and blog posts from Forbes, Startups and Zapier performing well, underlining Google’s desire to show decision-influencing content
  • And Reddit ranks at 6, when it didn’t appear at all when we looked at this sector in 2023
  • This pattern reflects a user journey in which potential buyers explore authoritative opinions before settling on a specific CRM solution
• Providers also do well for ‘know’ keywords: Thanks to their strong educational resources, such as how-to guides, blogs, webinars and resource hubs, software providers also take most of the top spots for our informational keywords. Half of the top-ranking sites are CRM providers
  • All the major suppliers have put major effort into guides on what a CRM is, when and why to use them and how to set one up. This has paid off with rankings across the CRM search cycle
• Winners for comparison searches:
  • With so much demand for advice on what a CRM does, rankings for these queries outweigh searches for the best CRM options
  • For those comparison and best queries, we see software comparison sites such as G2 and Capterra ranking prominently, but the big winners here are PCMag and Forbes
• Other content marketers do well: Sites such as Zapier and MailChimp are famous for their content marketing efforts, and we see them doing well for this subject
• We also see some of the usual suspects for informational queries doing well, with Wikipedia and Reddit ranking at 7 & 8
• New winners: Compared to 2023, many of the same domains are doing well, including Salesforce – our top site for both do and know searches. We do have a couple of big changes though, with Zendesk moving into the top 4 from the mid-teens for both lists and Reddit content in the top 10 when it didn’t rank at all two years ago

High-performance content examples

Having seen the winners, it’s time to find the high-performing content formats that are powering traffic for these domains.

These are content examples such as pages, directories or templates which consistently rank on page one, proving they’re customer-centric champions across our curated keyword list and the broader CRM search landscape.

Through finding these CRM conversion experts, we’ll uncover what content will streamline its way through Google’s algorithm and lead the sales funnel in search visibility.

The big winner in our research is Salesforce, ranking at number one for both our ‘do’ and ‘know’ keywords.

This is a repeat of our analysis in 2023, when Salesforce was also at the top of the pile for both keyword sets. This isn’t uncommon in this sector – 68% of the top 25 domains are the same across both our keyword lists.

Salesforce have the CRM market incredibly well covered.

Today, they rank for 310 of our 329 ‘do’ keywords (94.2%) and on page one for 69% of them

And also for 327 (94.5%) of our ‘know’ keywords, ranking on page one for 72%.

There are 11 pages from their site in our top 100 pages for our ‘do’ keywords. And also 11 pages among the top 100 pages for our ‘know’ keywords. 11% of the top pages for both keyword sets are from the CRM giant.

For our commercial keywords, most of the ranking pages are sales pages about the CRM, including dedicated sector pages on CRMs for small businesses, for real estate and for banks. There are also landing pages for those looking for a CRM for specific scenarios, such as for cloud CRM software or a specialised B2B CRM option. 

But a shining example of top-performing content is perhaps Salesforce’s educational content

Salesforce has explanatory pages on all aspects of CRMs, including the benefits of using one and examples of one in action.

However, their guide to “What Is CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?” tops both our keyword lists, thanks to Google wanting to show it when there’s even the slightest indication of potential informational intent in a search.

This long-form guide ranks on page one for 123 (35.6%) of our ‘know’ keywords and on page one for 62 (18.8%) of our ‘do’ keywords.

Supplementing this guide are four child pages. They cover the important aspects of CRM systems, including a guide to CRM software, CRM systems, the history of CRMs and what the future might hold.

Together, this set of five guides ranks for 1,227 keywords in the UK, with a remarkable 69.23% of the rankings on page one for the most important keywords. Together, these rankings bring an estimated 71k organic visits a month on average, traffic worth over £1 million!

The main guide to CRMs is a revamp of the article we examined in 2023. The page is a combined educational and sales piece, with over 2,000 words covering everything from who customer relationship management is for to seven benefits of using CRM software.

This breakdown into sensible sections also allows the article to have a useful table of contents and – importantly – subheadings covering popular search queries, such as those found in People Also Ask panels.

There is also a friendly video offering an easy-to-understand overview, plus plenty of highlighted stats and links to many related guides or blog articles for further reading.

Add in Salesforce’s fame in the sector, and you have compelling reasons for Google to show this guide.

The guide to CRM software follows a similar format, offering detailed information while answering common questions with just enough emphasis on why Salesforce is the best CRM option available.

This guide and the child guides moved to the /uk/crm/ directory in August 2024, boosting that directory. In fact, that directory now ranks for 2,116 keywords, with 66.1% ranking on page one. Together, these keywords bring in 1.08m visits a month on average 76k visits a month. The guides bring in most of the traffic, but not all!

As this is a valuable sector, Google Ads prices are high. The keyword ‘crm’ has a suggested bid of £19, and even a clearly informational term such as ‘what is a crm’ has a suggested bid of £9.80. So while this isn’t the biggest directory we’ve ever examined in SectorWatch in terms of traffic, it is one of the more valuable.

Of course, Salesforce aren’t the only site doing well. As we’ve already noted, HubSpot have hit the SEO headlines recently thanks to their pruning of their content marketing content.

However, when it comes to one of their core subjects, CRMs, they certainly haven’t lost 80% of their traffic or market share.

HubSpot ranks for 297 (90.3%) of our do keywords and for 323 (93.35%) of our ‘know’ keywords. Whatever has happened to a lot of its blog traffic, the site still ranks for its core commercial target terms.

If we look at the ‘Products’ directory, it has only grown in visibility:

Ranking for over 11k keywords in the UK, 26.6% of the rankings for the biggest keywords are on page one. Combined, all these rankings generate an average of 38.9k organic visits a month, worth a more-than-healthy £500k.

This includes top-5 rankings for important terms such as ‘customer relationship management’ and ‘free CRM’.

HubSpot’s main CRM landing page is the best-performing URL for our ‘do’ keyword set, ranking on page one for over a third of them.

This is a great example of high-performance content.

As for ‘know’ keywords, HubSpot has fallen from third in our list 2 years ago to sixth today.

We can see that the blog.hubspot.com/ section (which ranks for many of our sample keywords) has suffered a fall in performance. A year ago, this directory ranked on page one almost 30% of the time; now it is 15.5%. Not bad, but we can see the site has lost a lot of organic visibility over the past year, including a big hit around the time of the December 2024 Core Update.

There’s little doubt HubSpot’s blog has lost traffic, but it can still pull its weight when it comes to CRM-related topics.

One site that has seen a decline in fortunes is Keap, the small business CRM tool.

In 2023, Keap was in third place for our commercial keywords. Today, though, they find themselves in fourteenth. The domain was riding high two years ago, but has seen a sharp fall since then.

Keap was acquired in October 2024, but the fall in organic presence preceded the purchase.

Another site seeing a big change from 2023 is CRM.org, which was third in our ‘do’ rankings. Today, however, we find it in 139th place. The site is still active and updating its many guides, but we no longer see it ranking for these fiercely competitive keywords.

However, if some sites are losing ground, it means that others have to have gained visibility.

We see some examples of newer CRMs, such as Klaviyo, doing well. But – as with many sectors – Reddit is a big winner.

Only two years ago, we didn’t see Reddit rank in the top 100 domains for either our commercial or informational keyword sets, but today it ranks at 8 for ‘know’ searches and at 6 for our ‘do’ keywords.

In particular, 5 pages from the /r/CRM/ subreddit are in the top 100 pages for our commercial queries and 3 rank in the top 100 pages for our informational searches.

This specialised subreddit has seen the same explosive growth that the whole domain has experienced. Over the past two years, Google has decided that the first-hand experience of Reddit users is a great source of information for those choosing which CRM to get, or if they want to understand why they should consider using one.

The subreddit ranks for 1,244 keywords in the UK (including many in our keyword sets!). 28.95% of those rankings are on page one, with a similar amount ranking on page two, pulling in traffic worth an estimated £64k a month thanks to the sky-high Google Ads prices in this sector.

Summary and takeaways

After building a dashboard of the CRM software search market, here are our top insights to help you automate an organic pipeline:

• Create intent‑matched landing pages for every “buy” angle: Salesforce, HubSpot & Zoho rank for ~90 % of our commercial keywords by shipping tightly focused product pages (“CRM for real estate”, “free CRM”, “cloud CRM”) that mirror real‑world modifiers & use-cases. If you only have one catch‑all sales page, find ways to more relevant for each of your target audiences and own every use‑case niche.
• Build a pillar and cluster hub for your main educational content: If you have a large pillar article explaining a key aspect of your product or service, consider re-angling your main explainer, give it its own directory and bolt on sub-guides on relevant, related subjects to answer more queries and build topical authority (and offer more ways to mention your product!)
• Target valuable keywords, even if the search volume is low: PPC bids reveal the commercial value of keywords, offering opportunities to make money, even if the search demand isn’t high. Some sectors can deliver exceptional organic search ROI as a result
• Blend educational content with subtle calls-to-action: If you can reach your target audience early in the buying cycle with informational content, you can add soft nods to the qualities of your product within it (as long as you are very careful!)
  • While we are talking educational content, make sure yours is comprehensive with a clear structure of logical sections, subheadings that match search queries and packed with mixed-media content such as videos and statistics
• Publishers win trust with comparison article formats: Reviews or roundups by the likes of PCMag can get a high ratio of rankings for ‘do’ keywords in some sectors. This is especially true for large product purchases like CRM software, where even commercial searches are potentially still buyers making their minds up
  • Despite provider dominance, third-party review sites still offer a valuable service, at least for now

Keyword research in the CRM software sector

To connect with the best-performing content and sites in Google’s results, we curated a list of sample keywords representing some of the UK public’s most popular customer relationship management software searches.

While researching popular sector topics, we always group our keywords by their search intent. By clustering queries with a shared intent, we can compare content aimed at the same audience – those at the same buying cycle stage. Since Google tailors results to the searcher’s intent, grouping these queries helps us pinpoint which content formats and styles Google rewards across each aspect of this sector.

In this instance, we have a list of popular ‘do’ keywords, which are transactional or commercial searches and a list of common ‘know’ keywords, representing popular informational searches. For CRMs, we found many searches divided amongst several key themes:

• Buying a CRM
• What’s the best CRM?
• What is a CRM, how do I use it, and what are the benefits?

Some of the commercial keywords we’ve included are crm software – searched for 4,750 times a month on average in the UK – and small business crm (1,200 searches a month).

Other ‘do’ keywords include free crm (1,150 searches), sales crm (500) and open source crm (450).

Examples of informational keywords include crm definition, which has an average of 20,400 searches a month in the UK. Other examples include customer relationship management (44,300 searches per month), examples of crm software (850 searches) and best crm software (450).

We have a detailed, step-by-step article on keyword research with SISTRIX tools and data, in which you can see our list-building process.

Of course, Salesforce aren’t the only site doing well. As we’ve already noted, HubSpot have hit the SEO headlines recently thanks to their pruning of their content marketing content.

However, when it comes to one of their core subjects, CRMs, they certainly haven’t lost 80% of their traffic or market share.

Our SectorWatch process

For this SectorWatch, we used relevant keywords from a curated selection of CRM software keyword discovery tables. We selected highly targeted keywords with either a ‘do‘ intent or a ‘know’ intent. From these, we harvest all the ranking keywords for the top-ranking URLs in the search engine result pages (SERPs). We call this the Keyword Environment. Most SERPs will have some mixed intent, so we re-filter the list for the correct intents and sanitise it by hand to leave a smaller, highly-relevant set of searches made by the UK public broken down by searcher journey. The results are based only on organic rankings.

Curated keyword set and sector click potential

Core keywords: crm system, crm software, free crm, crm tools, customer relationship management, crm, what is crm, what does crm stand for, best crm software, crm benefits.

The full data set used for this study is available as a Google Sheet. The SISTRIX keyword lists feature allows for further analysis, including competitor analysis, SERP feature analysis, questions, keyword clusters, and traffic forecasts.

SectorWatch is a monthly publication from the SISTRIX data journalism team. All SectorWatch articles can be found here.

Related analyses can be found in the TrendWatch newsletter, IndexWatch analysis along with specific case studies in our blog. New article notifications are available through X (Twitter) and Facebook.