Labour increased their lead nicely in the seats they already held; The Tory lead in their safe seats stayed about the same. But the Tories were competitive in the marginal seats - Labour did well in some, but the Tories improved in others. And that was despite an average 10% gain by UKIP in those seats.
Here's the average swing to the Tories in the seats, divided up into the deciles based on the Tory lead in 2010 - ie the safest 10th of Labour seats are on the left, going to the safest Tories on the right. The figures at the bottom give the range of the 2010 Tory lead for that decile:
In the 4th decile, where the really tight marginals were, Labour did improve, but not by much, and the 5th decile, with the Tory lead from 1.8% upwards, that Labour would have needed to take, the Tories did better.
Whether that was because the Tories ran a better campaign in the marginals, or if their policies and image did appeal better to swing voters, is up for argument.
The Tories also had an inevitable advantage from the collapse of the Lib Dems. Labour and the nationalist parties won every Lib Dem seat that one of them were second in (and Cambridge, where Labour leapfrogged the Tories to win it; and the SNP took 4 LD seats the Tories were 2nd in) apart from Ceredigion and Orkney & Shetland (which had LD 22% and 51% leads in 2010). That gave Labour 12, and the SNP 10, but the Tories took 27 Lib Dem seats, and they were always like to take more than Labour - they had 18 targets where they were within 10% of the Lib Dems, and took them all. Labour only had 8 within that range (and 2 were in Scotland, where the SNP took them).
The only way for Labour to become larger than the Tories was to beat them well in the English marginals, and they didn't come anywhere near close.
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