6 Key Ways to Optimise Your Healthcare, Medical & Pharma Website

23rd Aug 2023

At Varn Health, we have many years experience in organic search and SEO projects for healthcare and pharmaceutical businesses. With our extensive experience, we’ve identified critical SEO factors that are particularly relevant and pertinent to healthcare and medical websites.

Six important factors to consider when optimising pharma websites for organic search

1. Regional Regulations for Pharma Companies
2. Avoid Duplicated Content
3. Targeted Keyword Research for Specialised Healthcare Terminology
4. YMYL Healthcare Content Guidelines
5. Log-In Walls for HCPs
6. Optimising Data-heavy Medical Content

1. Regional Regulations for Pharma Companies

Pharmaceutical companies operate within a highly regulated environment, and this is no different when operating in an online and digital space. Geographic regulations play a huge role in determining what pharma businesses can and cannot do online, especially concerning advertising and marketing practices. 

To avoid legal ramifications, pharma companies will often have to create not only new content but sometimes, entirely new web pages for each geographical market. But did you know that you can tell search engines which webpage is intended for which market, before the user even ends up on the site?

Utilising coding techniques such as hreflang – which maps up each website to its specific territory – can pre-emptively signal to the search engines, the intended audience for each webpage. You can read more about the importance of regional regulations for SEO here.

2. Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is a common issue found on pharma, medical and healthcare websites. Scientific papers are often published across multiple platforms, in journals as well as on other websites. You can resolve this issue by determining which version of the content should be prioritised in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), demonstrating this to Google, through consistent use of canonical tags and supporting it with an offsite backlink strategy. You can read more about why backlinks are important for healthcare here.

3. Targeted Keyword Research for Healthcare Terminology

As search engines have become more sophisticated, their ability to understand the complex nuances of how language is used has drastically improved. However, the niche topics and terminology used by HCPs can sometimes be too much for even Google to keep up with. 

When carving out a keyword strategy, it’s important to recognise that healthcare professionals may use different language and terminology. Therefore a deeper dive into user intent and developing an understanding of the audience-specific search terms, is hugely important in order to make meaningful headway in crafting your keyword strategies.

For example, a pharma website may mention an abbreviation for a drug, disease, medicine or molecule. However, this abbreviation might have multiple meanings, depending on where it is used and in turn, your content could get lost amongst unrelated topics. You should incorporate on-page cues and alternative longtail variations of important keywords, to craft an effective keyword strategy. In doing so, you’ll clarify to Google the precise term your page is talking about and improve your chances of ranking for the targeted keywords.

4. YMYL Healthcare Content Guidelines

When search engines pick what websites to rank number one on their SERPs, they choose the content they deem most useful for the user. Online content relating to healthcare and medicine falls under Google’s “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) guidelines, which involve strict standards due to its potential impact on an individual’s well-being. YMYL healthcare content is subject to stricter evaluation by search engines, with a greater emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) guidelines. 

When optimising healthcare content for SEO, it’s essential to prioritise accuracy and credibility by citing credible sources, providing comprehensive information and avoiding sensationalism or misleading claims. Many pharma websites will have YMYL at the forefront of their content strategies by making sure their website carefully abides by these best practices. 

5. Log-In Walls for HCPs

To ensure that content is seen by its intended audience, many pharma websites will place their content behind a wall so users who sign up and register for an account are the only ones able to read it. Although this can be a good strategy, it does mean that the content is not only gated for unsubscribed users but also potentially search engines, meaning it’s unable to be indexed. 

Resolving this involves coding techniques which will ensure search engines can crawl and understand hidden content, which means you can safeguard your visibility and rankings whilst catering to the intended audience of HCPs.

6. Optimising Data-heavy Medical Content

Pharma websites will often host a multitude of data-heavy content, ranging from clinical trial results to research papers. Whilst this content is valuable for healthcare professionals, patients, and researchers, it can present challenges for SEO due to its complexity and technical nature. 

The way that these pages are presented is a hugely important step in optimising them for search engines. 

For example, imagine a graph depicting the effectiveness of different treatments for a specific condition over time. This chart could be incredibly useful to HCPs, however, if search engines cannot understand and interpret this content, it won’t be considered useful enough to rank highly. 

Give the image of the graph a suitable name, describe it properly in the alt text as well as give useful contextual information elsewhere on the page. This will help search engines contextualise the graph and improve the overall SEO performance of the content. 

Want to help to develop a winning Pharma SEO strategy?

If you’re in need of support in crafting and implementing SEO strategy for your pharma, medical or healthcare website, Varn Health’s team of experts is ready to help. From comprehensive keyword research to coding optimisations and offsite backlink strategies, we offer tailored solutions informed by years of experience collaborating with healthcare clients. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help get your healthcare business more visible online and elevate your digital presence.