Maximising SEO Strategies for Life Sciences – Your questions answered

It is a fundamental reason why we do SEO, search engine optimisation. If you're a scientific startup or trying to accelerate your business, getting that visibility online will make a lot of difference. If you're publishing content, articles, research papers, or authority pieces and it's not easily found online, then that's a missed opportunity.

We ensure that whatever SEO plan we put together fits the business goals so that the business can pursue the next investment round, launch a product or service, or add thought leadership.

Taking those goals into account guides your SEO strategy so that whatever we create or optimise, whatever you've created, will reach the right people. Alongside that, we would look at keyword research.

An investor's search intent will differ from a lab trying to find some equipment or a company looking at diagnostic techniques; those search intents will be pretty different. So again, it's making sure that the SEO plan that you've got will reach all of those people.

You could have several audiences, and you could create clusters of content, information, or content hubs that speak to each one. We work extensively on audience profiling, particularly in the online space.

What websites are those audiences visiting? What social platforms are they on?

Google can also understand the content for indexing and crawlability. So long as Google can index and crawl your content and match the search query they're putting in, it's likely to start showing up on Google.

This question is more on the SEO strategy side. It does tip over a little bit into the first question.

Creating blended content, taking that scientific content, but also having a marketing slant, particularly if it's around commercialisation, if you are an early-stage life science or biotech spin-out company that needs to drive business sales, customer engagement, patient interest, then having that blended strategy–of the science scientific content alongside the marketing approach.

However, we need to make sure that we're covering those search terms, and also making sure that any scientific publications have the right structured markup as the right schema against it.

You have to think about the reader first, consider who's going to be reading that content, whether it's from a scientific background, healthcare, professional, investor, or partner; think about who's reading it, and really target them first.

When we're looking at SEO, we're looking to blend it into the content without it taking over. There is technical SEO optimisation you can refine behind the scenes to make sure that your content is SEO indexed. That wouldn't impact the page's readability; there are ways of structuring the content so Google can easily index it.

So what we call semantic markup, making sure that the headings are in the right place and in the right structure, that lists are semantically tagged. If you've got FAQs that they're there, they've have structured markup. The SEO elements behind the scenes that don't touch the scientific content, but if there's opportunities within the content where we can weave in keywords, but we would always make sure that the science or the information isn't compromised.

Make sure that it reads well for whoever is finding and landing on your content. Make sure that it's also optimised for Google. And you can do that without overly stuff or compromising that content. Yeah, and there are with with the life sciences, there's there. There are scientific factors such as compliance, authenticity, factual results that need to be retained.

Start with Google Analytics (GA4) on your website and Google Search Console. These will give you a lot of information, which you can use to help guide your SEO strategy and content.

The Google Search Console will tell you the keywords and phrases that Google currently shows for that website. It might be showing the wrong phrases. It might be presenting your content for the wrong phrases.

That can easily happen if you've written some content and Google misunderstood the nature of that content.

You can go back and refine this misunderstood content to something more relevant. Are you showing up for the right phrases? Adjust and refine from there.

Google Analytics will show you who's visiting the website from a very broad overview. Due to GDPR, there aren't any specific user details, but you'll get an idea of location, how long they're spending on the site, what pages they've clicked on, and any events that you're tracking.

GA4 and Google Search Console are free tools you can use. For paid SEO tools, you can use SEMrush, which will give you a massive amount of data.

If you have a software budget, it's worth looking at SEMRush, Moz or aHrefs. Some of the tools can be quite complex.

The paid tools require some setup. They really dig into search rankings, analysing content and comparing your position with your competitors. There's also Moz and Ahrefs. We use a piece of software called Screaming Frog, which is much more of a technical overview.

There are many more SEO tools, some good and some not. We can provide a list of SEO software, contact us

We need to look at each of your audiences in isolation. Target each one with specific content.

A scientific researcher is going to be looking for or interested in specific research or diagnostic-related topics and information,

An investor is going to be looking for different information, such as your business mission, product pipeline, differentiation, market size, market offering, appearance and sound of professionalism, and an investment opportunity.

A healthcare professional may be searching for patient-related information or services to help them in their daily care delivery activities. A private health company may be considering offering different services, partnerships, or patient acquisition.

Therefore, we need to deliver the following: commercial, educational research, information, and transactional intent. We need content that fits all of these situations.

The content revolves around the buying and search journeys and technical optimisation.

I think you're looking at the whole value chain—investors, once they're looking to invest in the company, want to see how commercially viable it is.

You need to make the website more relevant to the visitor who is trying to find out about your company and who doesn't know you yet. Flipping the intent of the website from it being the company to what that company can do for that visitor.

In the nuances and niches of Life Sciences, sometimes there are very few competitors. If it's an innovation, research, diagnostics, or something that's very new, it might not have any competitors, or there might be companies operating in similar fields.

So take that into account. How long they have been around? How big is their website? What's their website content?

SEO tools can provide analysis on competitors' websites, from an overview of what that website is about to write down to what keywords it's ranking for, whether it's using paid search or analysing the content it has.

You can also review and study the website yourself. Read through and get an idea of who they're trying to reach. Study competitors' websites, how they're presenting themselves, what you know, and what tone of voice they have.

Outperforming means making sure that you're different. Once you do that, it is different (USP), and you must understand how difficult or easy it is going to be to outrank them. What effort is involved? Are there any broader keywords that you could target that might be easier to show up for?

What's your unique selling point? Why would somebody go to you rather than them? Then, make sure that it is visible front-and-centre and that it is SEO optimised so that they can see that difference in the search results.

Focusing on ensuring that white papers, publications, webinars, and research information have the correct metadata, structured headings and semantic markup.

Behind the scenes, this is the technical SEO side of things. We ensure that the schema markup for abstracts and educational content articles is all in place.

Make sure it's semantically structured correctly and has external and internal links. You could link out to peer reviews and abstracts that might be on authoritative websites. That's going to help, so the fundamentals of making sure it's correctly structured, findable, and has internal and external linking.

Make sure that it's done on every piece of content. We call it missed opportunities if you don't. There might be a fantastic piece of research or an informative webinar, but if it's not findable if people don't know it's there, it's a missed opportunity to get it found and shared.

So high intent?

What are you defining as high intent?

Is it a commercial basis?
Is it somebody that you know is looking to partner with you to support your scientific innovation?

So, what's that intent? Again, make sure that your content is relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

You can produce case studies, FAQ sections, scientific articles, or educational pieces, but you must first define that intent.

Who are you targeting?
What is their intent?

Defining what high intent means for your particular business and your business goals.We talk a lot about creating and adding new content, which is essential. Google likes new content, but It will take several weeks to get indexed, and making sure it is indexed is an important step as well.

Publishing content and submitting it through the search console will help; although it doesn't necessarily prioritize, it does let Google know that your website has new content.

Refining your current content. Going back over past articles and adjusting them for those high-intent searches.

Things can change over time; businesses evolve, and what people are searching for evolves. Just making sure your older content is updated can have a big impact on SEO results.

Also, refine your core pages, your home page, your product pages, and your service pages.

Website content is not set and forget. Refreshing and updating long-standing existing content can have a big impact because you might just need to adjust it a little bit.

This can cross over into quick wins for SEO. There might be some quick wins, and they can be text technical fixes.

The Google Search Console will tell you pages that aren't being indexed. It could be that they're not being crawled or indexed at all, and that's a technical item that can be fixed.

SEO tools such as Screaming Frog can flag technical issues. Most of the payed for SEO tools will also flag SEO areas that need to be fixed or updated. Some of those can be quick wins.

Others may be a little bit more technical to fix, but they are still worth looking at. Page Speed is a different, slightly different area.

Page Speed - is the first thing to look at. The first thing to review is your website hosting. If you're on shared hosting, or it's low-cost hosting, you could be on a server with 1000s and 1000s of other websites. If they suddenly have an influx of traffic, it can affect your website performance.

It slow your site down that you know, that server resources are being used by somebody else. So we would always recommend having really good quality website hosting, where there's load balancing, CDNs, content delivery networks, to really help speed that up.

That would always be our first point. And then, yeah, we'd look at the content on the website, make sure it's optimized, make sure those images aren't too large. They're optimized as well.

Fix broken links, use a broken Link Checker to flag any broken links. Very often that's External links.

You might have linked to a third-party website, and they've taken the page down, or that site is no longer there. So again, you can go and fix those broken links. That can be a quick win as well.

They could also be internal links that are broken as well. You might have moved a page or renamed a page, and it's not been 301 directed properly.

Fix and all those things will will definitely help your SEO performance. Review on a regular basis, at least a couple of times a year, go and check the website for anything technical that needs adjusting.

Your website is not a set-and-forget. You must keep reviewing it and just checking that everything is okay.

Especially if you've got teams creating content as well, they might miss something, which might be flagged as a technical issue.

Competing for appearance in the knowledge panel or the AI snippet of information at the top of the search results goes back to having the content correctly structured, semantically markup, and schema markup, just making sure that it's technically correct, from an SEO point of view, educational, and peer-reviewed expertise.

Expert commentary that is scientifically accurate, medically compliant, and relevant can provide Google with the answer it needs. Google is trying to ensure that the information it provides is accurate and trustworthy.

EEAT content, Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trust. If you tick all of those boxes, you're much more likely to show up there. And if you've got something unique, original, and informative, then that's what Google's looking for.