Announcing Our New Head of Innovation Role

29th Feb 2024

We understand that innovation in search, AI and SEO within healthcare comes with additional challenges. Aimee’s new role is focused across both Varn Health and our Innovation teams, allowing us to apply her expertise and ensure we implement new innovation and developments, according to legal compliance and Google’s YMYL guidelines.

We have asked Aimee a few questions, so that we can share what her new role will focus on, and to explore how this will help shape the future success of our clients across both Varn and Varn Health. From understanding what’s next, as well as the need to adopt new tools, techniques & processes in order to have visibility online, Aimee shares her thoughts as our new Head of Innovation…

Can you tell us about your new role as Head of Innovation?

Definitely! I’m really excited to take on my new role, which came about after following the many new developments in the world of search marketing. I’ve been working at our parent agency Varn heading up the Technical SEO team for over 10 years now, and the world of SEO has changed considerably during this time. I’m now excited to take on a new challenge as Head of Innovation. 

We have seen more significant transformations in SEO over the past three or four years, leading to extensive research and ongoing training in order to stay ahead of industry developments. With the emergence of Google SGE and an increasing focus being placed on AI, a role dedicated to this innovation in search has become imperative. This is especially important in healthcare SEO due to the number of people using Google to find easily accessible information on conditions and treatments. 

With almost 15 years of experience in Technical SEO and a passion for all things Varn, I was thrilled to be offered this new responsibility. 

The role of Head of Innovation aligns with a fundamental objective outlined in the Varn Vision Statement, emphasising our commitment to spearheading advancements in search technology and leading search innovation. Alongside the introduction of this pivotal role and ongoing efforts to build an internal team dedicated to innovation, we are strategically directing our resources towards four key pillars within this workspace, steadfastly maintaining our focus on these aspects throughout 2024. These main pillars of innovation include the following:

1. Search Innovation: Search is constantly developing and has been for many years – but with AI becoming a key driver behind search algorithms and generative search results starting to appear, we’re expecting to see more changes and developments throughout Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in the coming months. We are committed to staying ahead of these forthcoming changes. By gaining a profound understanding of these developments, we can strategically assess their potential impact on Google search results and, consequently, on our clients. This proactive approach enables us to align client websites with the latest search advancements and critical ranking factors, ensuring their compliance and optimising their performance in the evolving digital landscape.

2. Technical SEO Innovation: It’s really important that we enhance our Technical SEO service offerings, which will be a vital part of our innovation initiative. This also expands to internal tools and the ongoing development of our amazingly talented Technical SEO team.  For instance, our commitment to excellence is exemplified through our SEO audits. These audits are meticulously crafted to form a comprehensive search strategy for each of our clients. In alignment with the latest trends in SEO, we consistently refine and expand these audits, allowing us to remain abreast of the latest developments and promptly adapt to any changes in the dynamic landscape of search engine optimisation – for instance, we have recently added sections to these audits for AI, web accessibility, and more.

3. Market Innovation: One of our other focus areas is to look at the wider digital marketing landscape. For example, we are researching and developing new PPC scripts to help our Paid Search team surface additional data from PMAX campaigns. We are also looking into new market developments in automation, AI, machine learning(ML), natural language processing, LLMs and generative AI, to name just a few areas.

4. Ways of Working Innovation: We are also developing our own Python scripts and GPTs, to streamline and automate internal processes – and not just for small sites that are relatively easy to crawl, we also work with clients whose websites contain 100,000+ pages. This strategic automation empowers our team to allocate more time to SEO tasks demanding a nuanced, manual approach. Simultaneously, we are crafting a suite of internal tools that conduct automated reviews of key SEO elements. These tools are meticulously designed upon a bespoke knowledge base, granting us full control over their analytical processes and scoring mechanisms. Leveraging our extensive expertise, we can evaluate critical SEO factors, expediting data collection without compromising on the quality and depth of insights. This dual approach secures the integrity and inherent value of our insights and experiences whilst ensuring efficiency. 

Why is it important to stay ahead of innovation in SEO and search?

In the world of SEO, it’s vital to embrace state-of-the-art technologies and stay at the forefront of industry trends, particularly in the healthcare industry. According to Digitalis Medical,  7% of all daily Google searches are health-related, with 70,000 healthcare searches performed every minute in 2023. 

Therefore, expanding your outreach to encompass online users presents a significant opportunity for substantial growth in your potential audience. Remaining at the forefront of search innovation is crucial in unlocking access to this audience, as it plays a pivotal role in sustaining and optimising online rankings and visibility and is a key part of outperforming your competition.

At Varn and Varn Health, we are passionate about our work and delivering results for our clients. As long as we consistently stay ahead of the curve and keep abreast of evolving search trends and patterns, we can expertly craft customised SEO strategies for our clients, ensuring successful and measurable outcomes.

What key developments do you think clients need to keep an eye on, and why?

One of the main updates our innovation team focuses on is the development of Google SGE. We have been testing the world of SGE since mid-2023 to understand how it works and how it might impact search results. SGE has been in beta testing since May 2023 and has been live in the U.S. since last August. It isn’t yet live in the UK, but is expected to be made live at some point in 2024. We’re really going to be spending a lot of time looking into this development that we recommend all clients monitor, as this will undoubtedly change the face of search. 

SGE is poised not only to influence the visual landscape of SERPs significantly but also to revolutionise the approach to content creation and optimisation for SEO. The emergence of AI-generated results seems to push traditional organic rankings down these results pages, occupying more prominent space and impacting organic impressions and click-through rates. Acknowledging the transformative impact of SGE, we are investing significant time and effort to fully understand its implications for both current and future clients. Our primary objective is to adjust the position of our SEO strategies, ensuring clients can optimise their visibility within the dynamic and evolving SGE landscape.

There are several key SEO areas related to SGE that I would recommend focusing on this year to help you stay ahead of the curve. Here’s a sneak peek into the areas I would suggest prioritising over the coming months:

• Long tail keyword targeting – SGE appears to respond well to conversational queries, typically captured by long tail search phrases. This potentially suggests a shift towards longer tail keywords or that you should at least try to incorporate these alongside your standard target keywords.
• Schema markup – It is arguably more important than ever to ensure that schema markup is being correctly utilised throughout your website, in order to provide clear, optimised structured data for SGE to pick up on when generating search results.
• UX and accessibility – Seamless user experience is key to making your content engaging and valuable to potential website visitors. This is vital to ensure that the most relevant, valuable content is easily accessible to users and crawl bots alike, in order for it to be pulled through to SERPs with ease.
• Imagery and other media – SGE typically pulls a variety of content through to SERPs when showing within Google results. For example, rather than just a text based result, it can combine copy, imagery, videos and more – all of which can potentially be pulled from different sources. Ensuring that all of the different forms of content within your site are properly optimised will enhance the chances of your site occupying at least one of these content areas.

We are also monitoring SGE from a healthcare standpoint, because we recognise that Google reviews YMYL content using elevated standards. Google have noted that this will continue in their rollout of SGE. Currently, all SGE responses show a disclaimer when including healthcare-related responses. 

Aside from SGE, we will continue to monitor AI in general throughout 2024. I posted a blog in November 2023 about AI and the future of search, which is worth reading. Key developments around Sustainability and GPT demands are other areas we expect to see throughout this year – Not only out-of-the-box GPTs such as Bard and Chat GPT but also custom GPTs built on a bespoke knowledge base.

We will keep clients and followers in the loop regarding our latest discoveries as a part of our innovation goals and research efforts. You can keep up to date with our latest innovation developments in healthcare SEO and find out more about what we’re working on by checking out the Varn Health Insights and by signing up for our monthly newsletter. 

If you have any questions about emerging innovation developments, particularly in the healthcare industry, or have a topic you think we should dive into as part of our innovation efforts, we would love to hear from you.