SEO optimisation of pharmaceutical companies

SEO optimisation of pharmaceutical companies (promotion of pharmacy websites, drugs, and other pharma products) – This is one of the most complex industries for SEO, and it is enjoying incredible popularity due to the limitations imposed by other channels. In this article, we will try to explain the peculiarities of SEO promotion of pharmacy products, reveal some secrets, and, of course, boast the results of our projects among online pharmacies and others.

Prioritise SEO promotion of a pharmaceutical website

There are several good reasons why companies invest money specifically in pharmacy SEO promotion rather than using other promotion channels – faster ones. Here are some of them:

• Limitations of paid drug promotion. The demand for SEO drug promotion is explained by the fact that such channels as contextual advertising, targeted advertising and others impose many restrictions on the promotion of drugs, dietary supplements and other products for medical and non-medical purposes. In part, this is due to the Laws of the countries where you plan to promote pharmacies, so the Ministry of Health of Ukraine developed a bill regulating drug advertising to comply with the norms of Ukraine and the EU. Investing resources in SEO promotion of medicines remains the only reliable way.
• The high cost of paid promotion of pharmaceutical products. Advertising of authorised products is very expensive due to high competition and a large number of similar online pharmacies. Thus, aggregator sites have little or no benefit from running adverts, as in most cases, the cost of conversion is higher than the profit from its conversion. Paid pharmacy promotion tends to make more sense.
• Number of traffic and queries. Traffic and key queries in the pharma industry number in the tens of millions, so good SEO allows you to get a lot of traffic with relatively small budgets.
• Getting targeted visitors. Unlike targeted advertising, search engine optimisation pharmaceutical companies allow you to get only targeted users. You will not be annoying, but you will become the solution to the user’s problem, for which he will be very grateful to you.
• User trust. Users still prefer search results to adverts, they trust more the pharmacy they have found on their own rather than the one imposed on them in not always appropriate adverts.
• Pharmaceutical brand promotion. Good SEO promotion allows the pharmacy (or other resource) not only to get targeted and conversion traffic but also to develop the brand—you become authoritative and recognisable, and your brand is seen and recognised by tens of millions of visitors every month.

How pharma search engine optimisation differs from other niches

Search engine optimisation for pharmaceutical companies differs from other niches in several key aspects:

• High cost of creating and maintaining the resource: Most template technologies are not suitable for this type of resource. You will likely need a self-written site, a complex backend and many frameworks. Also, the planned large and event traffic requires good server technologies, which can cost up to several thousand dollars for a monthly subscription.
• High competition: The pharmaceutical niche is one of the most competitive in Ukrainian search results. Many companies compete for high positions in search results, which makes promotion more complex and requires special attention to detail.
• Large site sizes: Typically, pharmacy promotion involves thousands of products that different users search for in different ways. This imposes certain difficulties both for the technical part of the website and server technologies and for the SEO specialist. Only specialists with high qualifications and experience in promoting pharmacy sites will be able to ensure the successful promotion of the pharmacy website.
• YMYL niche: Content on pharmaceutical sites is categorised as “Your Money or Your Life”, meaning that it directly impacts users’ health and well-being. Google is particularly strict about such content and requires a high level of authority and credibility. Because information about medical issues can affect people’s lives and health, Google regularly updates its content requirements in this niche to ensure that users are provided with relevant and reliable information. This means that pharmaceutical companies need to constantly monitor and comply with changes in the search engine’s algorithms.

Because of these and other features, search engine optimisation for pharmaceutical companies requires a special approach and attention to detail in order to compete successfully in this highly competitive and highly regulated field.

Features of promotion in the pharmaceutical industry

Features of promotion in the pharmaceutical industry depend only on the specific case; each site is different, but some features of promotion of pharmacy sites have similarities:

Priority pages are products

An important feature of the pharmaceutical industry is its focus on selling products such as drugs and medical devices. Therefore, in the process of SEO optimisation, special attention must be paid to promoting specific products, their descriptions, instructions for use, and other related information.

Unlike categories, they are difficult to systematise – the product may cease to be produced, go out of stock or become irrelevant, and the resources invested in its promotion cannot be returned.

In addition, products are in the thousands and tens of thousands (again, unlike categories), and even a large team will not be able to manually process such a large number of pages, so you need to use automation and template solutions, which is not always safe.

Specific product content

Most pharmaceutical product content consists of instructions, descriptions of properties and uses, and other technical information. This content may not always be unique, as basic product information may be available from various resources and may not be changed under any circumstances.

Pharmaceutical resources need to strive to create unique content that will help their products stand out from competitors while maintaining original instruction. Too much content can make pages cluttered and hinder the user experience.

Only with the help of a good SEO team can you eliminate these problems, keeping your site’s traffic and metrics intact.

Continuous growth in popularity and seasonality

The pharmaceutical industry is constantly evolving and growing. With the development of medical technology, new drugs and treatments, the demand for pharmaceutical products is also increasing. This creates additional opportunities for promoting and advancing products in this industry.

On the other hand, there is seasonality, for example, for pharmacy products against colds – this imposes certain limitations in traffic in certain seasons, which makes it difficult to analyse data, record the results of promotion and other monitoring processes.

Adherence to medical guidelines in content

Because pharmaceutical products directly impact health, it is important to consider medical guidelines and regulations when creating website content. This includes presenting drug information correctly, avoiding misleading claims, and adhering to side effect guidelines.

Practically, it creates the need to find and attract additional specialists to the project, which takes time, money, and managerial resources of the pharmaceutical company.

Optimisation for local search

Many pharmaceutical companies have retail outlets in different regions. Therefore, it is important to optimise for local search, including using location-specific key phrases, creating local pages and listing the company in local directories and rankings.

Online reputation management

With reviews and ratings so important to pharmaceutical companies, it’s important to manage your online reputation actively. This includes monitoring user reviews, responding to negative comments, and encouraging positive reviews through loyalty programmes and feedback.

Stages of SEO promotion of pharmacy websites

Let’s consider some of the stages into which the promotion of pharma resources is divided, and they do not necessarily follow each other, except for those that are excluded by the following stages (for example, the formation of the structure).

Forming the right structure

Forming the right structure in pharmaceutical SEO plays a crucial role in successful website promotion. Here are some key aspects to consider when creating a structure.

Hierarchical organisation: It is important to create a logical hierarchy of pages, starting from the home page and moving on to narrower thematic sections. For example, a site may have sections for different categories of medicines and then subsections for each specific medicine.

Navigation: Navigation menus should be intuitive and easily accessible to users. This will help them quickly find the needed information and navigate the site easily.

Readability of URLs: Page URLs should be clear and descriptive, containing keywords related to the page’s content. For example, instead of “example.com/page1,” it is better to use “example.com/analgin-kiev.”

Creating a sitemap: A sitemap helps search engine crawlers index all the pages on your site, making it easier for search engines to find them in search results. Ensure your site has an XML sitemap, which provides information about the site’s structure to search engines.

Content uniqueness: Each website page should contain as much unique content as possible to avoid duplication and ensure better visibility in search results. This includes unique titles, meta descriptions, and textual content.

Technical optimisation of the pharmacy website

Technical optimisation is quite an important step, and it is what will make you stand out from your competitors. You need to realise that most of the sites in the giveaway are very large and feature-rich, and therefore, their technical parts are likely to be questionable.

Providing the perfect technical part will allow you to rise higher in the search engines; this will be your key to success among competitors. The advantage of the technical part is that implementations are made once on a large sample of pages and improved and updated, which is a great signal of the quality of your resource.

It is important to understand that ordering a search engine audit of a website is not enough. Resources such as online pharmacies need the ongoing support of an SEO team that will monitor major changes to the site, conduct periodic analyses and provide other assistance with various site changes.

Working out semantics and content on the site

Website content is one of the most important parts for both the user and Google. In addition to the above-mentioned authority and expertise, content should answer the user’s question and be optimised for the search query’s keywords and intent (intent). Content includes text, logos, product images, maps with pharmacies, and other site elements. Everything a user sees is content.

Identifying the target audience

You need to identify your users and how they search for your services. Different companies will have different searches and users.

For example, for an information resource that does not involve commerce the target keyword will be “how to take Nurofen correctly” – from the query we understand that the user has already purchased the drug, the only thing he needs is to know the specifics of its use.

For online pharmacies, more suitable queries such as “price for analgin”, “buy levomekol in Kyiv”, and “order a back brace” – we clearly understand from the query that the user is going to make a conversion – the purchase of goods and for us such a user is a target user.

Keyword collection and clustering

In the first stages, it is necessary to determine the type of search queries for each of the types of pages, for example, for products, groups of products by various attributes and filters, as well as, if possible, to collect keywords for categories and the main page

As an output, you will understand how products are searched for (e.g., “analgin 10mg 10 pcs”, “analgin 10mg 10 pcs buy”, “analgin 10mg 10 pcs instruction”), and product groups (e.g., “citramone”, “citramone analogues”, “citramone price”). You will also have a ready list of keywords for categories and the main page.

Drug card processing

After analysing key queries, SEO specialists can use the formatted keyword cluster lists to identify page content blocks (to properly distribute keywords across pages).

For example, if the product cluster contains queries “buy analgin”, “analgin price”, analgin instruction”, “analgin analogues”, “how to take analgin”, “composition of analgin”, and others, the site should implement blocks for each of these queries with content that will fully cover the question of the user.

E-E-A-T – medical expertise and credibility

Let us remind you that expertise and authority in this niche is very important. Your task is to prove to Google’s algorithms and employees (so-called assessors), as well as users, that your site shows only verified and expert information to the user otherwise it will not rank in the TOP or will be filtered out by EEAT factors (experience (Experience), Expertise (Expertise), Authoritativeness (Authoritativeness), Trustworthiness (Trustworthiness).

In practice, this means placing licences for medical activities, placing official instructions and images of medicines, selecting authors for content with medical education and qualifications and creating separate sections for them on the site.

Adding “about us”, “shipping and payment”, “public offer”, “Disclaimer” and other pages will also be helpful. The user (and Google robot) should clearly understand who created the site, for what purpose, who wrote the content and who is responsible for the information provided on the site.

Regionality

It is important to consider the regionality of requests, as the user is most likely looking for an opportunity to buy the drug in the nearest pharmacy.

For this purpose, it will be useful to create pages with city maps that respond to queries like “buy insulin in Odessa,” “nurofen Ternopil,” etc.

Sections of the blog

You can “energise” your users by providing a list of medicines used for various diseases and creating sections on symptoms and diseases in your blog. This will increase the site’s reach, as will traffic and conversions.

Blogging closes not only informational purposes, it also increases the authority of your resource, strengthens your conversion pages and brings direct conversions with proper funnel analysis and management of user behaviour on the site.

Example: I feel a sore throat and want to know how to remove it. I visit the website with the answers to the questions and advice on the medicine. I go to the medicine page in my city and find out about availability and price. I make a reservation for self-delivery or online purchase. I pick up the medicine and remove the sore throat.

Be very careful when promoting your blog – always remember that you are making recommendations about treatment, you MUST make sure that they are in line with medical practice, and therefore must be written by a GP or other qualified doctor. Make sure you tell the user that it is not recommended to take the drug without medical advice, if possible provide this advice. Warn that self-medication can be dangerous to the user’s health.

Link profile optimisation

The link profile is the second part of your authority after content expertise. Remember that Google takes into account recommendations from other resources when promoting an online pharmacy in search.

How link drug promotion works: If other topical and authoritative resources link to your page and website as a whole, Google considers them good and authoritative.

A link from, for example, the Ministry of Health website or Wikipedia is considered good, as are news resources or specialised thematic sites, information resources and websites of medical institutions.

A separate successful practice is to promote pharmacies by building backlinks from educational and government institutions, such links are difficult to obtain and therefore are valued by Google much more than others.

If you need advice on SEO link promotion, contact the experts at Around Web

Cost of promotion of pharmaceutical companies

Prices are current as of 2024, according to the average research of SEO companies that promote pharma topics.

We at Around Web calculate the price for each client separately, but our promotion price is similar to the competitors’ averages in the table.

The cost of pharma search engine optimisation is usually high. Still, it is much lower than other promotion channels and provides the best results and highest return on investment in the medium to long term.

Conclusions

SEO optimisation for pharmaceutical companies is very difficult. A lot of time and money will be allocated to checking content and ensuring the content is expert on the website. Also, pharmacy promotion requires large budgets for link promotion.

However, promoting pharmaceutical companies is profitable because of the low cost to the client, high payback, and quick ROI (from 1 year).

Conclusion: Do SEO, it’s worth it.

P.S. If you decide to order the promotion of a pharma company in Around Web, the growth of your resource for half a year may look as follows: