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 and life sciences companies, and how does it apply to my company? In addition, 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 is it needed?
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 of your biotech website. This will help you rank higher with search engines. SEO helps your website appear higher on the list users see when searching for keywords associated with it.
SEO is like a personal shepherd. It helps guide people to websites 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, making sure to 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 you choose the best words and phrases to work the hardest for you.
With the right high-performing keywords working harmoniously for you, your visibility and interested traffic to your website increase. And the more interested people you get visiting your website, the more opportunities you’ll have for growth and engagement.
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Why is SEO so important for my biotech website?
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.
SEO strategy is a science, a labor of love if you will, with many contributing factors that play a role in the process. You can build the most beautiful, compelling biotech website, but if no one knows it exists, then it was all for nothing. There is no question that SEO is the digital priority of 2023.
Let’s pull back the curtains and look behind the SEO scenes.
Here’s what our website design agency does to SEO-optimize your biotech website:
1. Discovery and analytics for biotech
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 also use other tools, including SPYFU and AHREFS, to find out what pages are being optimized and which need further work. We will also look for opportunities from anything we currently see 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 are already and build on any successes you might have.
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2. Improve your biotech website’s on-page SEO
We use plugins to help inform the best possible keywords and terms for your website and make sure we follow 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. Keyword research will allow you to target your users so your keywords will have multiple goals like inform, educate, nurture, and convert.
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 their gene therapy options. In the second search, someone specifically looks 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 the user seeks.
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?
Building a plan for where you are now and where you want to be in the future is important. Part of that plan might be to build up content until you are past stealth and want to start talking about your science, product, or service. An iterative approach to your content strategy will allow us to make monthly decisions as we flow through and analyze data from our content.
5. Technical SEO and site health
Technical SEO involves reviewing any page errors on your website. The next step is correcting 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.
We rely on Google for the overall site health score. Google’s site health score lives in GSC (Google Search Console) and constantly evaluates your website’s health. It also constantly adds new factors to improve websites’ health on Google. Some health issues might be site speed, issues with code, or issues with the domain itself or URLs.
6. Site speed for your biotech website
The speed of your biotech site is crucial for positive user experience. One of Google’s page ranking factors is the speed at which your website loads. As a biotech company, you want the user to have a good first impression of your site, and site speed is at the top of the list.
Your website is a reflection of your company and how you present yourself. If your biotech company website is slow, that is not a good reflection of who you are. Instead, having a quick loading site shows that your company is professional. Quick website speed shows investors and consumers that they can trust your expertise in the biotech landscape.
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7. Usability for your biotech website
When it comes to usability, the organization of your content must make sense to the user logically.
- Look at the way your biotech website’s sections are organized and ask yourself: does this make sense for a first-time user?
- Does the organization of the sections convenience the user and will it be easy for them to navigate through the site?
These are important questions you should ask yourself when facing usability on your biotech company site.
Organize your drop-downs
Your drop-downs should also be appropriately organized for the user. If you have second and third-level drop-downs, place them logically under the primary category. That way it is easy for the user to read and understand. Sometimes this affects the mobile view of your site, so be sure to keep that in mind.
Make your calls to action (CTAs) clear
When a user lands on your site, the CTAs are clear calls to action that should stand out to them. Here are some tips to make them stand out:
- Use color and design elements to make them pop
- Use white space around CTAs for better visibility
- Make sure text is clear, descriptive, and action-oriented
- Make sure text is visible and easy to read
- Make them touch-friendly for mobile views
- Keep it to 1-2 CTAs per page to avoid overwhelming the user
Guide your site visitors
You want users to take action when they reach your site. There are many ways to do this and guide users through an experience that benefits both of you. You can have the sign up, download, or fill out a form on your site and you can guide them to do so.
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8. Biotech website accessibility
Did you know that one in four U.S. adults, or 61 million Americans, have a disability that impacts major life activities, which may include being able to access website content?
Biotech companies can improve traffic and conversions by making it possible for those who experience a disability to use your site to its fullest capabilities.
Having web accessibility is crucial for all companies, including your biotech company, so that your content can be used by everyone. With providing proper web accessibility, you ensure that your biotech website reaches a wider audience.
Here are some accessibility tips for your biotech site:
- Provide descriptive alt text for all site images
- Ensure that all biotech video content has captions
- Provide accessible forms and make sure form fields can be filled out using a keyboard alone
- Enable keyboard navigation so that users can navigate your biotech site with a keyboard alone
9. Optimizing your images for your biotech website
Advancements in image recognition, AI, and image recognition technologies have made visual search increasingly popular, allowing users to search for images on their mobile phones rather than using text. This has been especially popular among Millennial and Gen Z customers. Optimizing for visual search makes product images and service listings more visible in SERPs.
Tips to optimize your biotech website for visual search:
- Focus on image quality and focus
- Include structured data markup
- Compress images
- Optimize alt-text
- Include image sitemaps
- Use the appropriate size and file type
10. Mobile-first optimization for you biotech website
Today, most people now search on their mobile devices rather than on desktop computers. Google actually now prioritizes mobile-friendly pages in their page-ranking process. This means that we now must adapt to these new practices within our SEO strategies.
As a biotech company, you need to optimize your biotech website for mobile devices so that Google can rank you higher with its indexing practices.
Tips for mobile-first optimization for your biotech site:
- Make sure your design adjusts well to the mobile screen
- Make sure your site navigation is mobile-friendly
- Compress all images and video
- Create mobile-friendly forms
Putting these strategies into practice
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.
