Introduction to SEO Practices
14th September 2023
By Bree Foster, Science Writer.
Boosting Your Online Presence
In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business, and it’s no different in the life science and healthcare industries. Search engine optimisation (SEO) involves enhancing various elements of your website and online content to make it more attractive to search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. By improving your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), you can ensure that all types of potential, and existing, customers can find your website when they search for relevant keywords or phrases related to your business.
And reaching a wider target audience through enhanced SEO, means greater success in educating, and promoting your products and services.
In this blog, we will explore how SEO practices can benefit the healthcare and life sciences industries and provide you with valuable tips and strategies to enhance your website’s search engine ranking.
Harnessing the Power of SEO Practices
According to current estimates, there are approximately 1.2 billion websites in the world [1]. With such a vast online landscape, people are constantly searching for various topics related to your business, whether directly or indirectly. For instance, when you enter search terms like “qPCR techniques” or “gene therapy”, you’ll receive hundreds of thousands of search results in mere milliseconds. All relevant searches hold immense potential for life science businesses, not only due to the volume of searches, but also because they can represent highly specific and motivated visitors, offering excellent opportunities to address their queries, solve their problems, and establish trust as a reliable resource for them.
However, the question arises: How can you ensure that your business achieves a high ranking in relevant search results?
Search engines employ complex algorithms to determine the ranking of pages, favouring those that offer high-quality and pertinent information pertaining to the user’s query. Several factors contribute to this evaluation, including keywords, backlinks, unique content, and user experience. Consequently, a significant aspect of SEO for life sciences and healthcare marketers involves crafting compelling and useful content that is well-researched and original.
If you find yourself uncertain about how to apply these principles practically, there’s no need to worry. We have compiled a set of helpful tips to consider when assessing your own website or creating fresh content. These guidelines will assist you in optimising your online presence and improving your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.
Seven SEO Best Practices to Improve Your Ranking
1 Understand Your Audience: Prior to launching into the practice of SEO, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of your target audience. Begin the SEO process by identifying what sets your brand or company apart from others. This can be achieved by actively engaging with your customers or clients to discover what attracted them to your business over competitors. To effectively choose the right keywords and develop valuable content, it is essential to define your customer base and gain insight into their specific needs in relation to your products or services. By doing so, you will establish a strong foundation that will guide all subsequent processes in the right direction.
2 Conduct Keyword Research: Start by identifying the relevant keywords and phrases your target audience uses when searching for life sciences information or related products and services. Tools like Google Keyword Planner can help you discover popular search terms and their search volumes. Incorporate these keywords strategically into your website’s content, headings, meta tags, and URLs. For example, in this page our keyword is ‘SEO practice’, which you can see in our various headings and throughout the text!
Check out this guide by Moz for more tips on keyword research
3 Optimise On-page Elements: Ensure that your website’s on-page elements are optimised for search engines. Pay attention to elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, and alt tags for images. Including keywords “naturally” within these elements can improve your website’s search engine visibility.
4 Produce High-quality Content: Google is looking for pages that contain high-quality, relevant information about the searcher’s query. So, develop engaging and informative content that caters to the needs and interests of your target audience. Publish articles, blog posts, videos, and infographics that provide expert advice, showcase your knowledge and services, and offer valuable insights. High-quality content not only attracts visitors but also encourages them to spend more time on your site, reducing bounce rates.
Discover the benefits of content creation for life sciences and healthcare
5 Build Quality Backlinks: Backlinks from reputable and relevant websites can boost your website’s authority and credibility with search engines. Seek opportunities to collaborate with researchers, healthcare professionals, or industry associations to secure backlinks to your website. Additionally, share your content on social media platforms to increase its visibility and encourage others to link back to your site.
6 Enhance User Experience: User experience plays a crucial role when implementing SEO practices. Ensure that your website is easy to navigate, loads quickly (optimise those image sizes!), and is mobile-friendly. Optimise your site to cater to the increasing number of mobile users using different devices and screen sizes. Intuitive navigation and a visually appealing design can contribute to a positive user experience and encourage visitors to explore and come back! This is especially important for life science companies with diverse portfolios that cater to a range of applications – it must be easy for a customer to find what they’re looking for!
Use this Google tool to check if your website is mobile friendly!
7 Regularly Publish or Refresh Content: This allows you to respond to shifting needs in the marketplace. Your customers will need to find out about all the new developments in manufacturing, research, and analytical techniques, so publishing regularly allows you to address them. Additionally, search engines give a ranking edge to websites that publish frequently. For Google, this is commonly referred to as their “freshness” algorithm. In simple terms: for two otherwise equal websites, the one that is updated more frequently and recently will outrank the other.
Get the Most Out of Your Website
If your website effectively incorporates all of these essential concepts, that’s great! If not, it would be worthwhile enlisting the services of a proficient SEO agency, such as Alto Marketing (especially as we’re experts in all things life science and healthcare too!).
We can assist you in conducting a comprehensive audit of your web pages to ensure optimal performance. By entrusting this task to our team of experts, you can be confident that your website is optimised to its fullest potential and delivers outstanding results.
Contact us to discuss how our SEO services can help you!
References
[1] Huss, N., 2023. How Many Websites Are There in the World? (2023). Siteefy. URL https://siteefy.com/how-many-websites-are-there/ (accessed 2nd of May 2023).
