Can SEO be game changing for Healthcare? An Interview with Tom Vaughton: CEO at Varn Health

18th Jan 2024
Searching online is often the most accessible way to find information, rules and products but pharma and healthcare can often dismiss the vital need to be visible online. Many healthcare businesses may have some level of functional SEO, but it’s important to understand that not all SEO is equal.
Combining expertise across technical SEO and content creation and outreach, can mean your website will rank higher than your competition, and this difference can have an enormous impact on your visibility online. Understanding how to discover your healthcare content gaps and assess SEO ranking status is critical to ensure your content gets noticed by potential customers. Tom Vaughton, our CEO here at Varn Health, answers some key questions about how to utilise online search marketing and explains how it can be game-changing for your website.
Q: What are pharma & healthcare websites currently getting wrong when it comes to search?
Tom: “Research* reveals that over 88% of healthcare professionals are using search daily or several times a week for their work, with queries about everything from dosing to clinical practice guidelines, and yet, many pharmaceutical brands are not harnessing search marketing. This can be due to a lack of understanding of search engine optimisation, compounded by added pressure to remain compliant in a highly regulated industry. To add to this knowledge gap, they may not have internal capabilities to optimise their web presence.
I also think that the majority of pharma businesses do not have a comprehension of how powerful their websites can be; certainly, from a domain authority point of view or the true potential they have with Google. A widespread error is that pharma websites are going live without optimising for SEO. They could perform so much better by following straightforward SEO principles.
I would argue that it is vital that pharma businesses spend time auditing their specific healthcare market from an SEO point of view, as well as analysing web traffic data, identifying any relevant medical market trends and importantly, of course, understanding what their competition is doing. Pharma businesses are choosing to spend huge budgets creating content for their websites but without optimising, there is no guarantee that the right audiences are even seeing this content. It’s a surprisingly common and costly mistake.”
Q: Do regulations and laws for healthcare and pharma hinder SEO?
Tom: “You need to comply with regulations. For example, the FDA prohibits using certain keywords such as ‘cure’, making it tricky to rank for certain keywords. There may also be the need for disclaimers and restrictions on paid advertising, which makes optimising for SEO even more critical.
The good news is that your competition will have the same regulatory challenges, so you are only disadvantaged by not understanding them. It’s advisable to use a specialist or an agency that understands the specific labyrinth of rules that apply to and restrict the sector.”
Q: Has your background in biology been important when working with pharma businesses?
Tom: “I have been fortunate because I can balance my knowledge of SEO with my experience in science. I was a biologist first, before I set up my SEO company. It definitely helps me to work at a deeper level with pharma specialists because I can understand their products. It makes it far easier to be accurate and engaging when it comes to content creation for healthcare professionals and patients alike. I also stay up to date with the latest research, trends and complexities of the pharma market as it’s something I am genuinely interested in.”
Q: Can a pharma or healthcare company migrate a website without descending in search rankings?
Tom: “This is another common fear when a business knows they need change to be competitive but is rightly concerned they might take a massive hit in visitors when moving to a new website. However, you can migrate a website and keep your ranking, but only with very careful planning. We have done it for very large pharma websites and ensured website traffic remained level but as a cautionary tale, we’ve also seen examples of websites losing a staggering seventy-five per cent of their traffic when they have migrated without an SEO-led approach. You can understand, that can be a shock.
Without sufficient SEO insight and reporting, losses in traffic can be experienced that take a long time to recover from. The good news is, there are processes to ensure that you can protect the performance of an existing website when migrating to a new site.”
Q: What are backlinks and why are they important for healthcare?
Tom: “Backlinks are links that are from other websites to your website. When it comes to pharma and healthcare, it is particularly important to focus on obtaining these links to your site from other ‘high-quality’ websites. This means, established, authoritative websites which can be anything from a national newspaper, a respected institution, or a big business. You can achieve ‘backlinks’ by implementing a robust and well-thought-through ‘off-site’ SEO strategy. This means content, digital PR and communication activity that occurs away from your own website.
These ‘backlinks’ remain a crucial factor in impactful SEO results. This is because they help to generate website traffic, increase brand awareness, build trust and improve organic rankings. They are a key factor in Google’s algorithm.”
Q: What is Search Intent Modelling and why is it important to pharma businesses?
Tom: “Search Intent Modelling is a technique to provide more accuracy regarding your content strategy. In a nutshell, it’s about understanding the purpose of a search and how to deliver the most relevant content, in a way that search engines show it in the correct place at the correct time. In line with consumer behaviour modelling, we’re developing this technique to gain a full understanding of human and technical processes involved in searching for content.
Searcher Intent is simply understanding at what stage the searcher is in the research cycle and what they are hoping to find from their search. Typically speaking there are three types of intent. The first is Navigational, which is looking for a specific website or webpage. There is Informational which is looking for information such as an answer to a question and lastly, there is Transactional, which is looking to make a purchase.
We find that the majority of searches in healthcare are Informational. We then categorise these into searches about Symptoms and Diagnosis, Treatments, and Community, such as living with an ongoing condition. Search Intent Modelling helps guide pharma businesses to discover the most appropriate content to use for their website and digital PR efforts.
For example, if searches are generally more informational, your website may focus more on sharing FAQ responses, informative blog posts or detailed documents to download. This can also improve the user experience of the searcher, as they are more likely to find the information they are looking for in the format that is the most engaging and useful to them. Google likes this and ultimately you will see increases in your website traffic as the search results will be much more relevant to the searcher, whether that’s a patient or healthcare professional.
Search Intent Modelling can also be used to identify potential target customers and used to create targeted campaigns. Applying this to your website can be game changing to generate new leads and increase conversion rates.”
Q: Is it difficult to integrate SEO into your existing marketing strategy as a pharma business?
Tom: “It is perceived as being difficult but it’s always possible. SEO is complex and there are so many ranking factors that it can feel an overwhelming task, to incorporate into an already existing marketing strategy. The important thing to remember is that it’s key to achieving online visibility for any upcoming new product launches, as well as your existing portfolio of products.
It’s wise to see SEO as an essential component of the long-term marketing strategy and to be honest, it’s not always the quick win that clients ask for or demand. Like most successful strategies, it requires careful planning, building gains over time, and focusing with laser precision on the people you need to engage with. Something I will leave you with, is that if you’ve not developed your SEO strategy, then I can bet you some of your competitors will have, and it’s likely, they’ll be seen in a search by a customer first.”
*(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8386376/)
Need help with your Pharma SEO Strategy?
Need help creating and/or implementing your SEO strategy for your healthcare website? The experts at Varn Health can offer support with everything from keyword research and content planning to coding optimisations and paid media advertising. Get in touch to find out more.