Local SEO for Healthcare and Pharma Websites
20th Mar 2024
Over many years of working on healthcare websites, we have found that localised content is a recurring area of concern and consideration for pharmaceutical brands. Because of differing regulatory approaches in different countries and territories, it is often necessary to create separate content for each location. Sometimes, multiple websites need to be created from scratch, each targeting a different country. However, it can then be difficult to ensure that the right audiences find and access the content intended for them, particularly when it comes to organic search traffic.
What should healthcare, biotech and pharma marketeers bear in mind when working on global and local SEO strategies?
Putting in place an overarching localisation strategy
Before you can think about keyword research, optimised content, technical SEO or off-page support, it is important to have a clear sense of your localisation strategy. Often for pharmaceutical sites covering a specific drug or disease area, this will involve a global version of a website which is then translated into multiple languages and aimed at multiple regions. Each version of the site will likely have content differences reflecting the local market, language, regulations and culture. In such a case, there must be an overarching strategy delineating which content is aimed at which location, as well as whether there is a ‘default’ content version for countries and languages which are not being specifically targeted.
At this stage, it is also useful to understand which local teams or individuals within an organisation will be involved with creating and maintaining content on these websites, and to consider how these stakeholders can be encouraged to buy-in to a marketing strategy which involves SEO. As we will discover, a successful organic search strategy will need to span all content within your overarching strategy, so it is important to make sure local teams understand how SEO can help to grow highly-relevant traffic to their local site.
Location and language-specific keyword research
Armed with an understanding of which local site is aimed at which location and language, it will be important to conduct keyword research for each region separately. The aim is to understand the organic search landscape for each location, taking into account fluctuations in language between countries as well as how differences in culture and society impact search behaviours for either HCPs or patients.
Once a data-led picture of each local search landscape has been created, this can feed into a content strategy for local websites. This can be as subtle as tweaking the metadata on a page to use the UK English spelling of a word rather than US English – or could involve creating completely fresh content for a specific country. Search engines like Google place a lot of value on high-quality content (for example, the vast majority of healthcare content should abide by YMYL best practices) so will prefer sites that use localised spellings and word variants, since this reflects content that has been well-thought through and created with a specific audience in mind.
Technical requirements for Regional SEO
If you have multiple versions of a website, each aimed at a different local audience, how will search engines like Google know which to display in their Search Engine Results Pages? Sometimes, they can make an estimation based on the language used. But if you have multiple Spanish-language websites (for example) how will they know which is intended for an Argentine audience and which for an audience in Spain? There are a number of technical elements which should be put in place on your healthcare or pharma website to help point search engines in the right direction:
1. Hreflang
Hreflang is the main technical element which must be implemented when you have multiple language or location sites. This piece of coding is not visible to visitors to your website but very simply tells search engines which version of a website is intended for which location and/or language. Importantly, hreflang code must be implemented on every version of a website in order to work correctly. This is why it is essential to make sure your local site owners understand the importance of your overarching localisation strategy and will be able and available to update their site coding to reflect your required hreflang implementation.
2. Canonicalisation
Canonical tags are another piece of coding which contribute to the local SEO puzzle. Similarly to hreflang tags, these explain to search engines what is happening whenever a website has duplicate content. Whilst they do not provide geographic information themselves, it is important to make sure that they do not contradict the hreflang coding in place on your websites, so that a clear and unambiguous signal is given to search engines.
3. Schema markup
Schema markup is a language that talks to search engines and provides contextual information about your website. When it comes to local SEO, this can be useful to explain details of the organisation or company responsible for a website. “Organization schema” for example can explain to Google that a particular pharma company has created a particular website. This will help search engines build up a sense of how your local sites are related and should interact with one another.
4. Correct use of Interstitials
It is very common for localised healthcare websites to make use of interstitials (otherwise known as pop-ups). In the context of a pharma website, these will likely appear as soon as a visitor enters a website, asking them to confirm if they are a healthcare professional and where they are based. The interstitial may then redirect the user to the relevant local website. Many people do not realise that using pop-ups, dialogs or interstitials can have a negative impact on SEO performance. We recommend reviewing and abiding by Google’s guidelines on the subject to make sure your site is not unfairly penalised.
5. A robust updates strategy
Whilst not a technical item in itself, all your coding and technical optimisations across your multiple language and regional sites will be facilitated by a sensible, reliable and clear process for making updates or amends. For example, if a new local site is launched for a particular drug, disease or topic, all the existing related local sites will need to have their hreflang code updated. It will save time and effort if you have a clear process in place to facilitate these implementations across each relevant language site.
Language and Country-Specific Off-page SEO
The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to localisation for pharma and biotech websites, is off-page SEO. Positioning your site amongst relevant, high-quality websites in your niche encourages search engines to view your content positively. Therefore using legitimate and above-board tactics to grow backlinks to your local websites from suitable country-specific sites will be highly beneficial for growing organic search. We recommend an off-page strategy with separate strands for each location and language, using language-specific and keyword-rich anchor text for links as well as researching the highest quality sites with the most relevance and credibility in each region.
Talk to the experts
The best way to make sure your pharma, biotech or healthcare content ranks well on Google and displays the right content in front of the right audiences in their relevant language and region is to simply get help from the experts. At Varn Health, we have decades of experience in helping pharmaceutical websites show in the organic search listings for the most relevant search terms. Contact us to find out more about how we can help, from SEO audits to bespoke keyword research, site localisation, or off-page projects.
