SEO is a term you may have heard before, but it’s something that might feel a bit mysterious. What exactly is SEO for biotech companies, and how does it apply to my company? It’s a common question many people just like you are asking themselves, in addition to how does it work and why is it so integral to the success of my biotech website.
Let’s break it down.
What exactly is SEO for biotech and why do you need it?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a practice that helps increase the visibility of your website. Simply put, it’s how you get your website seen in a crowded online marketplace. You can incorporate what SEO experts call “keywords” — words and terms commonly searched for — throughout your biotech website content. You can also add them in other locations on the back-end for your biotech website. This will help you rank higher with search engines. SEO helps your website appear higher on the list users see when they search for keywords associated with your website.
SEO is like a personal shepherd. It helps guide people to your website who are interested in learning more about your science and technology. These visitors are those who might invest, or become a future trusted partner. Without it, your website gets lost.
How does SEO work for my biotech website?
There’s a lot of finesse that goes into researching keywords, working with platforms like Yoast to choose and incorporate the best keywords, and weaving those words and terms seamlessly throughout your biotech website content. Our SEO experts use many tools to analyze trends and statistics of popular search terms within the biotechnology space. This helps to choose the best words and phrases that will work the hardest for you.
With the right high-performing keywords working harmoniously for you, your visibility increases along with interested traffic to your website. And the more interested people you get visiting your website, the more opportunities you’ll have for growth and engagement.
Why is SEO so important for my biotech website?
As I said before, SEO for biotech companies is one of the best and most powerful ways to help your website be seen in a crowded and noisy online marketplace. And in the current biotechnology space, you need this invisible workhorse cranking behind the scenes for you and your website. While you by no means need to become an SEO expert (that’s what we are here for), it is important to understand why it is so important.
SEO strategy is a science, a labor of love if you will, with a lot of contributing factors that play a role in the process. But it is unquestionably a key contributor to the success of your website. You can build the most beautiful, compelling biotech website, but if no one knows it exists, than it was all for nothing. There is no question that SEO is the digital priority of 2023.
Let’s pull back the curtains and take a look behind the SEO scenes.
Here’s what our expert digital agency does to SEO-optimize your biotech website:
1. Discovery and Analytics
We analyze every page of your new biotech website and identify the key messages and phrases that naturally occur throughout your content. We then take the best word or phrase and use that as your keyword for that page.
From there we look at patterns and trends in Google Analytics and Google Search Console. We use other tools also, including SPYFU and AHREFS to find out hwat pages are being optimized and which need further work. We will also look for opportunities from anything we are currently seeing on your website.
One common practice here is moving some of your results from Page 1, onto Page 2 to move the needle faster. We like to work from where you already and are build on any successes you might have.
Another example might be that someone is landing on a specific page through a search, and then leaving. We then ask ourselves what is that on-page experience and how do we move our visitors to the next pieces of content or through the right journey.
How to Build an Effective SEO Strategy Unique to your Business
2. Yoast SEO helps us improve and maintain your biotech website’s SEO
We use a platform called Yoast to help inform the best possible keywords and terms for your website and make sure we follow their tips and best practices to include those keywords in key places throughout your website. We include that keyword on the back end of your website in the SEO title and meta description. This is all done behind the scenes to help boost SEO. In cases where we are helping maintain content on your biotech website, we will help you choose keywords and make sure content is posted correctly, which includes all the recommendations for Yoast SEO along with content recommendations.
3. Keyword Research for your biotech website
Part of keyword research is measuring where you are now, and how to move and increase searches for the proper terms you want. It’s important to find out what terms people are using, and configure a plan to not only land those searches but convert your users to the next phase. Whether that is another page, a form fill out or just making sure the right content is being presented, your goals should be aligned with the content you present. Keyword research will allow you to target your users at certain parts of the buyers journey, so your keywords will have multiple goals like inform, educate, nurture, and convert. You can somewhat measure where a buyer or user is in their journey by the words and phrases they type in.
A research or education goal might be a search such as “gene therapy options in the US,” another search that might be closer to conversion could be “gene therapy options for cancer in San Diego.” In the first search, someone is researching what their gene therapy options could be. In the second search, someone is specifically looking at gene therapy for cancer in a specific region. The second search would be called a “long-tail keyword.” These keywords are far less searched but have great value if the search results yield the answer or the user is looking for. For example, if they find your website under gene therapy for cancer, you might ask yourself who that user could be. Are they a patient, are they a researcher, are they, potential scientists?
Looking at this kind of data and keyword strategy can help you target the right keywords to help your user find what it is they need.
4. Content strategy for your biotech website goals
Science is complicated and content for biotech websites is too. Many of our startup biotech company clients are in stealth mode or at a round of series A funding where they can’t share too much information yet. So how do you combat SEO if you have no content?
It’s important to build a plan for where you are now and where you want to be in the future. Part of that plan might be to build up content until you are past stealth and really want to start talking about your science, product, or service. A content strategy is a custom plan and will require participation from all parties, on both the client and agency sides. An iterative approach to your content strategy will allow us to make decisions together every month as we flow through and analyze data from our content.
5. Techincal SEO and site health
Technical SEO involves reviewing any page errors on your website, or correctly any SEO data that might not be implemented correctly. Some of these errors could be broken links, no redirect pages, and files that are not named or too large. We use several tools including AHREFS and Screaming Frog to help us maintain and improve technical SEO on websites.
For the overall site health score, we rely on Google for that. Google’s site health score lives in GSC (Google Search Console) and is constantly evaluating the health of your website. It is also always adding in new factors to improve the health of websites on Google. Some health issues might be site speed, issues with code, or issues with the domain itself or URLs.
Now that you know what SEO is, how it works, and why it must be something you might want to consider prioritizing for this year. SEO without a doubt plays a key role in the success of any biotech website at any stage of its clinical journey. Whether it’s raising awareness about your company’s science and innovation, attracting new investors and partners, or bringing quality future employees or advisors on board, SEO is what can help you do it.
At Ladybugz Interactive, we offer customized digital growth packages that are perfect for your digital marketing and SEO needs. We have SEO experts on staff who guide our successful practice and who are well-versed in how to get your biotech website seen in a busy marketplace.
So while you don’t have to become a biotech SEO expert to ensure the success of your new life sciences website, you do need to know who you can turn to for help.
