2025 Greeting Cards Industry Analysis

If your shelves are stocked with witty birthday cards or full‑bleed photo prints, this Greeting Cards Industry Analysis will show where you stand online. The Salience Index reveals a 17 % rise in sector‑wide organic visibility this year. Download the full data‑packed PDF free here.

2025 is here! This year, thanks to AI, we’re certain that nothing is certain. We’re already seeing marketing teams lean in even more on AI tools and software, and we’re expecting higher levels of market volatility as a result. Yet, some marketing challenges remain from last year: the need to reduce reliance on paid channels, a renewed focus on brand performance, and better coordination between individual channels. How will you keep tabs on the industry movements? That’s where our report comes in .

Which greeting‑card retailers dominate organic visibility?

These brands are the ones to watch. They’re on the rise with the biggest growth in the market. Whatever they’re doing, search engines are loving it and you’ll want to work out what that is and emulate their strategies, fast. Full top‑100 visibility rankings are in the free 69‑page PDF.

This number is an estimation of how much organic search traffic your target website, subfolder or URL gets each month.

So, to be clear, we haven’t somehow gotten into your analytics account. We use this score as an indicator of overall website growth or decline. When placing your score in contrast to the wider market, you can pinpoint an all‑encompassing ranking of organic traffic scores. 

Ahrefs finds all the keywords for which your target ranks in the top 100 organic search results. They sum up the traffic estimations of each keyword and estimate the search traffic your target gets from each of those keywords based on its ranking position, monthly search volume and our estimated CTR for that position. 

Printed.com – the unlikely superstar of greeting cards

Marketing is in flux. Our Salience dataset of 100+ greeting‑card brands shows that AI‑driven volatility in 2025 is forcing teams to pivot to organic channels. Paid budgets are shrinking, so organic leaders have to get crafty. Among the top performers, one mid‑table brand is quietly blowing past its rivals. Printed.com ranks 15th for organic traffic but its 68 % YoY growth dwarfs the category average. The company sells print goods to businesses yet outperforms established household names in search. Its success lies not in cheap tricks but in a polished user experience, inventive content and a sense of community. See the full Printed.com story.

Keyword battleground: heavyweights vs quick wins

High competition keywords

These keywords are the heavyweight belts, the golden tickets, the ones to tell your nan about. For top‑of‑market brands holding these positions, close monitoring and continued search‑marketing activity is needed to safeguard them. For challenger brands looking to weigh in, you best bring your A‑game. High competition keywords are typically sought after by big brands with brick‑and‑mortar reach. Qualifying intent is more important than ever on these keywords. Providing the correct user journey upon first click is critical .

Top ten heavyweights by volume:

• birthday cards – 37 000 searches (competition 24)
• happy birthday card – 4 900 (30)
• next day birthday cards – 2 200 (57)
• custom birthday cards – 2 700 (20)
• ecards birthday – 700 (20)
• send birthday card online – 500 (49)
• birthday cards near me – 1 400 (51)
• first Christmas card – 900 (19)
• email birthday cards – 700 (39)
• digital Christmas cards – 700 (33)

Opportunity keywords

These terms have less competition yet high search volumes. As such, they are a perfect battleground for all brands in the industry to increase their digital reach. For challenger and low‑visibility brands, these are the terms where you’ll see most success. For market leaders, these are the terms that have probably skipped your radar. Dig into these and corner the market .

Examples include handmade birthday cards (1 000 searches, competition 5) and charity Christmas cards (3 500, competition 3) .

Emerging trends show explosive growth for seasonal searches like easter cards (+1 342 %) and religious Easter cards (+1 088 %) .

Get the complete list in the free Salience Greeting Cards Index. 

Brand reach

Monthly brand searches indicate recall. Moonpig tops the chart at 1 220 000 searches, while Card Factory logs 450 000. Social metrics shake things up: JibJab scores an owned‑social 3 954 despite modest search volume. Blend both to see true brand awareness.

Trust signals & reviews

Trust centres around both on‑ and off‑site signals. Your Money Your Life (YMYL) e‑commerce brands are those most likely to see visibility drop as a cause of poor trust signals. A website can be used to build trust through “trust signals” – user reviews, testimonials, guarantees and credential badges. Of people, 98 % only pay attention to reviews written within the past two weeks .

Quick checklist for trust placement: trust bar site‑wide, testimonials on PLPs, individual product reviews linked to a review profile, and credential badges on checkout.

Visibility vs authority

Authority is about the stature and reputation of your website. Search engines like high‑authority sites as they’re loaded with trustworthy signals. By matching visibility scores to authority, we identify which sites are performing beyond their means. Links aren’t a numbers game. Not anymore, at least. The loose correlation between the number of linking domains and organic traffic scores shows that it’s quality, not quantity, that counts .

Hats off to the high‑visibility, high‑authority cohort – they’ve built their house right and have the search‑marketing strategy to expand. Those with high visibility but low authority may not have the brand reach compared to rivals, but over‑perform in search engines thanks to technical SEO, content and site experience .

Page speed & UX – because nobody likes waiting

A 1‑second delay in load time results in a 7 % loss in conversions – the PDF’s page‑speed leaderboard shows which brands are lightning‑fast and those lagging behind. Get the full list in the free 69‑page PDF.

What’s next?

If you want to boost your store’s visibility, learn more about our e‑commerce SEO services

Want more content like this delivered daily? Connect with Michael or myself on LinkedIn, where we share regular insights, practical tips, and industry analysis to help you stay ahead of the curve.