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How to achieve authority for pharma websites

Web sites authority is essential for ranking, trust and neighbourhood. Pharma websites, more than other sites, are concerned with trust. Indeed, if a visitor arrives on a site through a link from a site which he trusts, he will likely trust this site too.

So links, more precisely, absolute authority links transfer trust (and relevance and visitors). Absolute authority links can be informational or navigational. The informational authority links come from trusted informational sites like MedLinePlus, Nature, WebMD and furher trust and visitors. The navigational authority links come from websites like HealthDemoz, Google Health, Search Madica and transfer relevance. Therefore, authority can be achieved by acquiring links from this kind of sites. This is also pointed out by a recent article which explains that websites gain authority by themselves, having links pointing to the site for a longer period, and having other authority sites link. 

This article focuses on how to acquire high quality links from authority sites and other high quality sites. First, let us precise what is a high quality link and a high quality site.To have « high quality » label, a link must have the following two characteristics: i) the anchor text contains target keywords and ii) it comes from a high quality site. A web site is high quality if it has: i) a large number of external links - ideally more than 50 and ii) a Page Rank above 4.

With these points fixed, let us beginn our "how-to" with:

1. Check external links

The goal of this checking is to give you an overview of your links and to enable you to identify unwanted links (like Viagra selling sites,...) and poor quality links.To realise it, you can use one of the following tools: Google Webmaster tool, Xenu’s Link Sleuth, a great free tool that must be downloaded; it is showing back links, anchor texts, broken links, ...

Note: at this check step, it is worth checking your neighbourhood, too, that means the neighbours your site has on search engines. Someone who searches first sees the results of the pages as a whole, so being surrounded by quality websites is a must. You can know them by typing "related:your site" on search engines.

This overview will indicate you if you need optimization, developement or both of them to continue.

2. Link optimization

The goal of this step is to remove the unwanted links and to improve the quality of existing links. If you detect unwanted, wrong links that can dammage your authority, you may contact those webmasters and ask to remove them. If they are non-responsive, you have the possibility to complaint to Google and ask for blacklisting. 

The quality of your existing links can be improved by using correct and diversified anchor texts among the most searched terms.To find them, Google AdWords tool will help you.

3. Link development

To develop new links, first you have to identify high quality sites. For this, you can use Langreiter Tool that compares the top 100 results for a keyword term on Google and Yahoo!, TouchGraph visualises links between different sites. You can also use utility linking tools such as SoloSEO, Similpedia or Google syntaxe "link:your competitor" that can help you to see which sites are linked to your competitors. It is important at this stage to focus your attention on diversification. As shown above, you need informational sites, specific sites centered on your domain, and important also to include educational and governmental sites (with extension .edu, .gov). Finally, don't forget to check the quality of the sites. A rapid way to check it is using SEO for Firefox.

After you have identified your sites, you have to contact the webmasters and ask them for links by indicating the anchor text you need. This step may take you time and even efforts, but it is worth it because it is the way to your website needed autority. 

The key ingredients for good (SEO) pharma websites

One of the major pharma event this spring was the Digital Pharma Euro at which Jens Monsees from Google gave a presentation during which tweets containing interesting data came out. Below are the most relevant as far as pharma websites are concerned:

So, 60 % of pharma websites are missing key ingredients for good SEO. Let us work it out! It is about taking some steps, applying some rules and knowing some tips in order to create good content and promote it. This post gives you the most concentrated form of them. Follow, use, forward them and help to lift pharma websites.

Good content is written for both users and search engines. First, you have to think of the users and write for them useful and interesting content. If they find it interesting enough to link to it, you've done the major part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Indeed, search engines place more emphasis on links: the more links point to your website, the better your ranking is. 

But before users like your content, they have to find it and you can help by: 

1. Knowing users
1.1. Define your target audience and their interests

Normally, it is a long and expensive way, but you can use the shortcut which is Google AdPlaner. It allows to identify websites your target customers are likely to visit and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.

1.2. Listen to

What are they talking about? Are there any specific needs rising from their conversation? To know it, search Twitter for the keywords you are interested in and/or use tools like http://www.backtype.com/, http://socialmention.com/, http://ekstreme.com/buzz to find out mentions, comments, buzz. 

2. Creating optimized content
2.1. Find the best, effective keywords 

Keywords are the words that web surfers enter in search engines to find websites and they might be different of keywords you expect. For example, people searching for "rhinoplasty" might actually enter "nose job" as the keyword. It is important to find the searched-on words; it is pointless to optimize web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the search engines.

Step 1: Go to GoogleAdwords. Step 2: Type in words that you would like to get access to (start generic). Step 3: Look at different keyword ideas, chose the keyword phrases with the hoghest number of searches done per month (Global or Local).

Notes: Use two to four word phrase in a search, so phrases are very effective. It would be interesting to use Google Trends and Google Insights to check the evolution and the interest for your identified keyword phrases. If you need more keyword suggestions, try the Wordtracker tool or for Niche Keywords use the Wordstream tool. 

2.2. Optimize your pages, use efficiently your keywords

By optimizing your content you tell search engines for which keywords you want your content to be found. Use your keyword phrases in page title, description, headers, body, URL, internal and external linking text and follow the rules:

Title has to be accurate, short, descriptive and limited to 65 characters. Meta description has to describe precisely your content and limited to 160 characters.

Note: You can use the character counter to calculate the number of characters of the words of the texts: 

Heading tags are a great place for keywords with an added value. Make sure that your headings are relevant to the text following it as well. Anchor Text, the clickable text that users will see as the result of a link, has to contain variations of your keywords (avoid generic anchor text like "click here",... ). URL, your document location, has to be clean, short and descriptive. Use dashes (-) to break up words within your URL rather than underscores (_).

2.3. Create your content 

The more detailed and unique your content is, with naturally targeted searched-for terms, the better. Use keywords mainly at the top and the right of the page. Pay attention to the first paragraph because people who submit stuff to social media websites often use it as the description of the submission. 

Once your article is written, think of promoting it

3. Promoting content 
3.1 Think social sites 

Submit your content to generic social sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook,.../span>

3.2 Think article, PR sites 

Submit your articles to article sites like ezinearticles and prweb.

If you pick and use these ingredients, your content on your pharma website will be rewarded by Google.

Always keep an eye on them using the check-list :

 

You can download the longer format of this post in pdf.

And finally, share ingredients, check-list and help to lift pharma websites.

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Another look at pharma's Twitter presence

The list of pharma companies on Twitter is growing and their social-media friendly attitude is rewarded by an increasing number of followers. The type of followers and the degree of the engagement were analysed in the case of some companies. Another look at this Twitter presence is taken for you in this post. It is a real look because what I suggest to you is to use some smart visualising tools and get the views on what, how, when for the tweets of Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson&Johnson and Roche.

I picked up these companies because they are in the above mentioned study and seem to be the most engaged.

Let start with TwitterVenn. It allows to enter three search terms and it returns a venn diagram showing frequency of use of each term and frequency of overlap of the terms in a single tweet. It also shows a small map of the most common terms related to each search term; tweets per day for each term by itself and each combination of terms; and a recent tweet. The diagrams obtained with the word maps for the terms Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson&Johnson and Roche can be seen below.

 

 

Tweets containing Johnson&Johnson  are dominating while tweets containing Boehringer Ingelheim are only 33 tweets a day. This is not surprising because these diagrams are not reflecting the activities of these compagnies on Twitter; Boehringer, for instance, has launched a social-media heavy campaign earlier in February to raise awareness about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). So, Boehringer has had an intense activity but about terms as COPD and Drive4CODP (the campaign name). As the word maps show, the words related to Boehringer are about "jobs" and the words related to Johnson&Johnson are about "win" "prize" "baby". Does that suggest recruitment and respectively marketing via Twitter? Tweets containing Roche are associated with diseases and drugs. Notice that Avastin and stomach cancer related results were delivered at this time and as we can expect the words related are Avastin, study, cancer, stomach.

Twitter Spectrum  is a similar tool that compares two search terms and shows which words are most commonly associated with each terms and which words are most commonly used in tweets with both terms:

In this clearer picture, Johnson is the most important. Let us observe it further to see the flow of conversation for Johnson with Stream Graph. You can enter a search term and this tool returns the frequency of the most common words found for the last 1000 tweets. Notice that 1000 tweets can take 20 min or 2 weeks; for Johnson as show in the streem bellow is about 2 hours.

All of the terms in the stream can be highlighted so that we can see how their frequency changes over time. Here is the stream for Johnson:

We can see that high frequencies for the word "Johnson" are associated with words "baby", "prize", "win", "congrats". Notice that by highlighting on congrats you can see the winner, and so on. 

Let quit for a while the Twitter sphere big picture and  focus on the compagnies' Twitter accounts. First, take a look at their tweet clouds with TweetStats:

  
Then, with the same tool take a look at their frequencies and densities:

And finally a bonus with what these companies like and retweet and with whom they discuss most.

So, it seems that it was worth taking this visual look because we obtained easily and rapidly a great picture about some aspects of the Twitter presence for the chosen compagnies. The tools used are only at the beginning and hopefully they will improve for more accurate uses, too. 

Popular, best health care web sites

At our last #hcsmeu tweet-up we discussed about the Patients Like Me (PLM) website and lessons learned from its success reflected in its more than 15 disease communities and more than 50,000 members. Its values are pointed out rapidly: 

• good data
• patient-centric, open-platform, wisdom of patients, real world data
• win-win model: patients find out which treatment is most effective, pharma get data package.

Some reflections also were made:

• data is one of the things patients are looking for and some of them are more comfortable with sharing data on platform than others
• PLM could strengthen its approach by creating stronger physician participation
• PLM is a great place for patients to find data, but the support is average; many other forums provide that better.

But some questions rise about popularity: What is it based on? Is it the most popular? Is it the best? Does most popular means the same as best?

As far as popular vs best is concerned, for most participants it is obvious that best is different from popular and it is based on criteria such:

• quality of infos and interactions
• transparency, interest of links, importance of the registered health care professionals, regularity of answers
• highly contextual - depending on disease area, demographies/behaviors, and specific needs
• related to needs - a directory could help find best sites
• best sites should have discussion "rooms" for patients only and separate rooms for both patients & health care professionals.

These criteria could be completed by criteria used by the Web Marketing Association  to determine the best Health Care Web Site each year:

• Design
• Ease of use
• Copywriting
• Interactivity
• Use of technology
• Innovation
• Content

As far as popularity is concerned, the most popular Health web sites of 2009 are  the result of a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and traffic data from Compete. These criteria: traffic expressed in unique visitors/day, visitors/day, as well as inlink, quality of links are the criteria to take into account to determine popularity. They can be obtain by using the following free tools: Compete, SeoMoz Linkscape, and SEOquake FireFox extension.
With these tools, results for PLM and other patient-centric web sites are given in the table.

Content for pharma & healthcare dedicated web sites

Content first, as K. Halvorson, has shown it in an outstanding way at the last web 2.0 conference. 

Indeed, content is still first because it is a key factor in achieving authority and visibility. Good content builds authority: content placement increases visibility. Moreover the new field #contentstrategy has just appeared.

So, it is the key part but not the easiest part. This is why I gather here some interesting links that could help for pharma and healthcare. In this case, in addition to the regulatory rules to take into account, the content is traditionnaly divided in branded which includes the name and attributes of the product and unbranded without name and mainly patient-driven.

Branded vs. Unbranded: Divided Attention is an excellent article which describes some interesting aspects of this division. The brand-specific content is generally about dosing, cost, safety profiles, drug interactions, formulary coverage, prescription assistance programs, clinical research studies. Its targets are for both health professionals and patients. In 2009 a recent study by Manhattan Research shows that about 71% of physicians use it during patient consultation. Patients who are increasingly engaged in their health care want this type of content, too.

So in branded cases the subject is determined and the content cycle has to integrate high visibility and accessibility to respond to physicians' needs to quick acces.

The situation is different in unbranded cases, where contents are more open and choosing the good focus is more challenging. Start simply by thinking what customers and patients ask you, what they want to know about you, and then refer to these questions: what people like to discuss and what people are searching for.

To know what people like to discuss, Twitter will help you. Use Advanced Search and use hashtags like #hcsm and #hcsmeu which will bring you in the heart of healthcare discussions in US for the first and EU for the second hashtag.

To know what people are searching for use Google Insight for Search and WordTracker.

Google Insight for Search is an extension of Google Trends and will help you to see rising searches overall or in a specific filter that you set up:

With WordTracker you will find out about 100 questions that people are asking for a keyword you enter. The first of them for h1n1:

 

Hope this will help to create content as a valuable resource.

Social Groups for Smarter Projects

Let’s socialize groups focused on targeted web subjects and give  their members connectivity, real-time and information management system to  work together. In other words, let’s lift groups to the next higher level. 

Imagine you are a member of a focused targeted group and you can integrate with the services you already use  tools which help you collaborate on projects, including document sharing and wikis, communicate via microblogging or full blogging, share links or  itineraries for business trips, collect feedback on an idea. The knowledge for your projects will be build in a faster, more focused and more evolutive way.  The work will be done in a more motivating, enjoyable and flexible environment. From your iphone too you will follow groups and members, find people you need and manage the contacts and even track goals or receive alerts when some key word is said.

Let’s boost our projects, let’s get them smarter. If you think so, join us and take advantage of the connectivity and real-time to cross-corporate groups. 

We want to create powerful, remarquable social groups where members gain satisfaction, experience and reputation by achieving together. That is why they are working on invitation only; so send an email to dynamia.ch@gmail.com  with a few words about you and the kind of projects you are working on. 

We hope you will join existing groups or contribute in our  forum to develop new ones in tune with your goals.

Hashtag for this project is: #sgsp

What I do to make my SEO client happy

Following Clinical Trials on Twitter, #followclinicaltrials

A recent post  Follow the engagement- visualizing #followpharma, has inspired me to gather in one place the «must-to-follow» in clinical trials.

I am following clinical trials on social medias as SEO-clinical trials consultant who needs to know what is happening and where. For this purpose, I have simply created a column in my TweetDeck and I am following the information flow. I can say it is really valuable. Nowadays the flow is mainly constant  concerning the swine flu vaccine: where the trials are realized, who is searching candidates,…I was also very enthousiastic when I discovered the TrialX application which enables you to receive the clinical trial application in your area (now only in the US ) using Twitter or your iphone.

Here is my selection to follow :

http://twitter.com/healogica Helping individuals and clinical research studies find each other. @edshin @jeanlucneptune @jefforulez. NYC-based clinical trials start-up.

http://twitter.com/CenterWatch The global source of news, directories, proprietary market research, and analysis for clinical trials professionals and patients.

http://twitter.com/bioitworld A leading source of news on technology and innovation in life sciences IT, informatics, genomics, drug discovery, development, and clinical trials.

http://twitter.com/trialx The TrialX Twitter App allows you to find clinical trials of new treatments in your area. Send us a tweet @trialx CT 'your healthprofile'

http://twitter.com/GCPworks Clinical trial QA & compliance good clinical practice (GCP) professional and pharma domainer, ePharmaWorks.com 

http://NovartisClinicalTrials.com Find out about Novartis clinical trials currently enrolling in the U.S. 

As the list will expand rapidly, I shall create a wiki page on our platform Smarter Projects through Social Groups . If interested to participate, ask for an invitation, please.