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One of the major things to consider when choosing a keyword is the searcher's intent. What is the searcher looking for when he/she searches "alkaline phosphatase"? A good assumption would be that they are looking for general information about the compound and enzyme. A look at the Google
SERPs will tell you more:
As suspected, the top result is a page with general information about the enzyme. The remainder of the first page results are pages about the ALP Test, which are not relevant to staining kits.
Google has done an excellent job at configuring its algorithm to show search results that match the information that the searcher is looking for. The above results indicate that users searching "alkaline phosphatase" are not looking for alkaline phosphatase staining kits. As a result, if these searchers landed on a staining kits page, they would click back or bounce to find the information they are looking for. A high bounce rate will result in lower rankings (more on that in later points).
Consequently, it would be wiser to pick a more relevant keyword like "alkaline phosphatase staining".
It may even be worth considering targeting a longer tail keyword like "alkaline phosphatase staining kit" or an abbreviated keyword like "ALP staining kit" which has only 50 searches/month. Of course this is very low traffic. But again, think about the searcher intent! A user searching for this keyword is clearly looking to buy a staining kit. Ranking number 1 for this keyword could be way more valuable than ranking for "alkaline phosphatase staining", where searchers may in fact be looking for the staining method or protocol.
Which keyword you choose out of the two would be a matter of preference, but there are 2 more major factors that will help with your decision...
When choosing between a selection of keywords, checking the competition in the search engines is a key step. An easy way to measure yourself against your competition is by checking your Domain Authority against theirs.
Domain Authority (DA), in a nutshell, is a score out of 100 based on an algorithm developed by Moz. It shows your likeliness to rank for a keyword. You can read more about DA here.
You can check the DA of each competitor in the search results manually using a tool like the Domain Authority Checker. A seamless way is by using the Moz SEO Toolbar.
If you have a website with a DA of around 20-30, and all page 1 results for your target keyword have DA 60+ (as search engine dominant companies like Thermofisher, Sigma and Abcam do), then it is not likely that you will rank if the content you produce is similar to theirs. If they are not effectively optimizing their content for the target keyword however, or you know that your content is going to be significantly better, you could be in with a chance.
If a competitor with a low DA is ranking on the 1st page, then go check out their content and learn why they are ranking.
The next thing to check is where your domain is currently ranking. The best and quickest tool for this is SEMrush.
If you are currently ranking #12 for a keyword that you are not optimized for, then optimizing for this keyword will likely push you to page 1.
Another reason to check your current rankings is because another page on your website could already be ranking. If this is the case then you may not want to disturb that ranking and create competition by optimizing another page for the same keyword.
Our client Vector Labs wanted to rank the below Lectins page for the keyword "lectins", which has an average search traffic of 14,800. Pretty good!
We found that Vector's Lectins and Glycobiology Reagents page was already ranking #12 for "lectins" and therefore this page (rather than the Lectins page) should be optimized for that keyword instead to push it to page 1.
Considering the Lectins page was in fact a page for Lectin Binding Assay products, we chose to optimize the page for the very relevant keyword "lectin binding assays". This keyword only has 20 searches/mo, but these are searchers looking to buy these assays.
"Sheldon here. Do you want to hear how our PhD team of content writers and marketers can improve SEO for your company?
Let's set-up a time to chat. Fill out this form on our website and indicate 'SEO Checklist' to get the conversation started."
Having enough quality content is extremely important for a website's ranking potential. Unfortunately, oftentimes, life science companies face the issue of clearly communicating the complex. Researchers are well aware that journals and peer reviewed articles must leave no details unturned. However, this conflicts with basic principles for effective marketing. Content needs to be presented clearly and concisely with a focus on the user.
Generally, many life science companies have numerous products and services that include complex technical specifications, case studies, protocols, product information, and more. In order to simplify the website and reduce clutter, companies cut down or misplace SEO-beneficial content. As a result, some of the best content for search engine ranking potential is stored away in hard to index tabs or PDF documents that bear little to no impact on ranking potential for search engines.
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and SEO, Google's E-E-A-T guidelines have become increasingly important to rank well. E-E-A-T stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These factors are not just buzzwords but critical elements for any website aiming to rank well in Google's search engine results.
Later, we will examine the ideal site architecture structure to maximize ranking potential. Most importantly, content must be laid out strategically utilizing an effective keyword map.
Ensure that your URLs are descriptive and optimized for your products or services. This means that if too many of your URLs are dynamically generated or with session IDs, they should be updated to something easier for humans to read and ideally incorporate your target keyword.
A LIFE SCIENCE EXAMPLE
Title tags are pieces of code on a webpage often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.
Title tags should be optimized and unique. It should include your targeted keywords assigned to the page. Title tags should not target the same keyword for multiple pages because this results in your website's own pages competing with each other for ranking positions. See SEMrush's guide on preventing keyword cannibalization. Google, in turn, is confused about which page to rank for what keyword and ends up ranking neither.
Additionally, your brand name should be included in your title tag to improve click-through rates. Title tags should be between 50-60 characters (512 pixels) to be fully displayed. You can test or review title pixel widths in the Mangools SERP simulator.
An example of an ideal homepage title tag for a company that focuses on CRISPR services and knock-in mice would be:
CRISPR Services, Knock-In Mice | Company Brand Name
Meta descriptions are what show up directly on Google's search results. They are one of your company's best opportunities at improving click-through rates.
A well-written meta description should provide a clear unique value proposition for why a potential customer should view your offerings rather than a competitor's website ranking next to yours.
We recently received a lead that was wondering why their website wasn't ranking for the keyword "ELISA kits."
Our answer: There is no dedicated page targeting the keyword "ELISA kits" that can be optimized. These products are only listed on this search listing page. A dedicated page for ELISA Kits should be created to optimize for this keyword with relevant, unique content.
In addition to search engine driven content, there should be content to help educate users about the product or service. Utilize the best copywriting guide to help you structure your content in a way that drives a customer down a natural funnel leading to a desired action.
Just a few examples include AIDA, (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and our personal favorite for homepages in particular: AICPBSAWN.
Check out this Link Building Strategy Guide from SEMRush to get started.
Google sees links from external websites as referrals - these websites are essentially vouching for you. The more links you get from high-authority, trusted websites, the higher your Domain Authority (your ability to rank for keywords) will be.
The higher the Domain Authority of the website the link is coming from, the more valuable the link is in the eyes of Google.
The links you obtain should also be relevant to your industry. The more links you obtain from websites that are related to your industry or the topic of your website, the more likely you will rank for keywords within your industry. Similarly, for low-authority links, too many external links from irrelevant websites could be seen as spam and could affect your rankings negatively.
Luckily, in life sciences, the easiest place to obtain links is with other trusted high-authority life science websites. Here are a few of the best places to get links:
Take a look at this screenshot of the Transomic Technologies distributor page below.
We consulted Transomic to reach out to each of these distributors and obtain a link. As a result, Transomic obtained 17 links from high authority, trusted, relevant websites.
High authority links can help dramatically boost a website's online visibility in search results.
Reach out to your most loyal customers or clients, or the customers that you have built a relationship with. We found that the most effective way to obtain a link is in exchange for a discount on your products or services.
If any of your clients are university research labs, this is where you could hit the link jackpot. Universities have some of the highest authority websites on the web (usually with a Domain Authority of 85+). One link from a university website will be more impactful to your rankings than 50+ links from low authority web directories.
Create excellent content and resources for the life science industry that is valuable enough to link to. A great way to get inspiration for content and resources is to conduct a competitor link analysis. Using Open Site Explorer (free with a Moz subscription), filter through the link profile of a competitor that is successfully ranking online.
Open Site Explorer is a fantastic resource that gives you information about every inbound link that a website has. You can essentially spy on your competitors. The software tells you where the link is coming from, which page it's linking to, the anchor text, and even the spam score and domain authority of the linking website.
Within the links displayed, we're looking for common resources and content that external websites are linking to again and again.
Here is a snippet from Genscript's link profile:
After analysing Genscripts highest authority inbound links, we found that 24 inbound links were referencing Genscript's WoLF PSORT Localization Prediction Tool.
This simple bioinformatics tool is pulling in a large portion of Genscripts most valuable links, which is hugely boosting its own domain authority and rankings. Genscript is edging out a lot of its competitors on the search engines for protein and antibody services because of the creation of this one resource.
The reason this tool is receiving so many links is because researchers are using it for protein analysis in their research. As a result, many journal websites and university websites are referencing it.
At Supreme Optimization, we have found that creating and promoting bioinformatics tools has been a successful link building technique.
As mentioned above, if link building is not done correctly, Google could view your link profile as spammy and potentially impose a Google penalty on your site.
Even before you embark on a link building campaign, it is important to check the health of your link profile using SEMrush Backlink Audit Tool or Moz's Open Site Explorer to check for spammy and low authority links that could be impacting your site negatively.
Also check any overuse of anchor text in your inbound links which could be considered a red flag of unnatural link building by Google. As a general rule, if 10+% of your inbound links have exact match anchor text (not including branded anchor text), then you should consider diluting this.
Performing a link audit is especially important if you have paid for any previous SEO services. Outdated SEO methods included submitting your site to 100s, even 1000s of spammy web directories. Google caught on to this technique and now imposes Google penalties on any websites it finds participating in these unnatural link building campaigns.
https://vectorlabs.com/products/labeling-reagents/biotin-quantitation-kit-quant-tag-biotin-kit
Fig 15. Two versions of the same content may lead to duplicate content penalties.
These two URLs show the exact same product under two separate categories.This is duplicate content. These two pages are competing with each other to rank in the search results. As a result, Google could end up not ranking either of them.
Other ways to search for duplicate content would be to:
with Google.
Does the content exist on a secure version of the site? If it is, make sure that is the preferred version of the website and other versions are redirected to it.
Pro tip: Google "strongly recommends using HTTPS for your site to protect your users' security and privacy." So if you aren't using HTTPS encryption, you should.
Are product categories filtered using url parameters? For example:
https://example.com/products/enzyme-substrates
https://example.com/products/enzyme-substrates?applications=ihc&enzyme=ap
The second URL above is a duplicate of the first URL listing enzyme substrates, except the second URL is filtered for enzyme substrates with a IHC application (applications=ihc) and alkaline phosphatase detection enzyme (enzyme=ap).
The two URLs are duplicates of one another as they display most of the same content. Use canonical tags to specify to Google which of these URLs to ignore.
"Sheldon here. Do you want to hear how our PhD team of content writers and marketers can improve SEO for your company?
Let's set-up a time to chat. Fill out this form on our website and indicate 'SEO Checklist' to get the conversation started."
Accessibility and indexation are extremely important factors especially for life science companies with large catalogs of products. Oftentimes because there are so many unique genes and products referencing product families, web developers opt to place the entire product catalogue onto a database. Therefore, when a customer searches through the website, they can find all of the database products easily in one place.
Executives are happy and web developers are able to charge less for this type of product catalog. However, the major area overlooked is when it comes to search engines. Search engines may not be able to index your product database search results without specific parent category landing pages!
Parent category landing pages help search engines understand your product database and help your site to rank for category terms that are not specific to one product e.g ELISA Kits or Biosimilar Antibodies.
Additionally, if you plan to run paid traffic to any of these pages, you won't be able to run paid traffic to a dynamically generated search listing page. Instead, you will need a parent category landing page that lists the unique SKUs of your product. For example, the parent category page would be 'ELISA Kits' and child products could reference different SKUs, sizes, targets and other formats of your product.
One of the most overlooked areas for an effective SEO strategy is the site's architecture. This is one of the most crucial aspects of your site's SEO performance, however most don't understand exactly what type of site structure influences SEO.
At the core of site structure is a great user experience. If you remove all of the design elements, colors, branding, fonts, graphics, and white space, all you are left with is structure. Have you noticed that certain websites have an intuitive feel to them? That's because these companies have continually optimized the user experience that is logically and cognitively satisfying to users according to their behavior flow.
In turn, because the site is more satisfying to users, search engines will be able to index and rank it better as well. Google's algorithm uses information from searchers to rank your website. If your site has poor CTRs, high bounce rates, low engagement, it will not perform well in the SERPs. By contrast, when a user finds a site that they like, spends a lot of time on it, and finds what they are looking for, Google will rank this one higher. For more resources on website UX/UI, please check out Supreme Optimization's post on '5 Challenges Life Science Companies Face During Web Development and Solutions'.
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Founder, Head of A.I
