Are institutional and product portals of major pharmaceutical companies optimized for search engines? No, according to the technical study of Pro Web Consulting.
How and how much does the pharmaceutical industry use search engine optimization? Very little, without even looking after the basic best practices, as the web agency Pro Web Consulting noted in September 2015, which conducted a technical study to evaluate on-page optimization of a dozen of product sites and institutional portals of major pharmaceutical companies.
Some medicines are so well-known that they have become top-of-minds, also thanks to television communications campaigns and adv on major journals. But what if you analyze these references for their online presence?
First of all, it should be noted that not all products have a dedicated site, so for some,the institutional brand portals have been taken into account. The first insights – based on incognito navigation surveys conducted on Google.com – show that many news and content websites rank in the Search Engine Research Page (SERP) much earlier than the official site of the medicine or the manufacturer.
The references were divided into two macro-categories, anti-inflammatories and antipyretics, chosen as an example because they are more competitive on a sales level: they were matched with keywords that relate to different semantic areas related to the disease and their symptoms or major remedies.
SEO could be a remedy for lack of online visibility, especially now that investment is expected to increase after the entry into force, from July 1st,2015, of a new legislation that also authorizes online sale of drugs in Italy without obligation of prescription.
If the terrain of challenge between the major manufacturing companies will move from pharmacies and drugstores to the web, it is clear that the ability to rank for the most competitive keywords will become fundamental.
Even names such as Aspirina, Moment, and Tachifludec have extremely low visibility indices – close to zero – and rank for a limited number of keywords, not to mention that they are totally absent from Google’s results. The only “virtuous” example is Fluimucil.it, which ranks in the top 5 search pages for almost all the target keywords – colds, coughs, cold remedies, flu symptoms, cold remedies, cure remedies – an outcome far from sensational, that gains importance only because of the general level of competitors. The focus on SEO is noticeable at an on-page level, that is, on the structure of the Fluimucil.it site: although basic, these optimizations bring advantages to the portal, compared to competitors who instead do not seem to be interested in them.
Because the sites of the companies taken into account for this overview are far from optimized for search engines, the early mover, the first who will decide to rely on SEO, will have enormous benefits over the competitors.
Pro Web Consulting: who we are and how we conducted our research
Pro Web Consulting is the Swiss SEO agency, ranked among the top 25 worldwide SEO agencies and winner of numerous awards, which has made of its expertise its flagship business. We offer SEO focused services: Search Engine Optimization, SEO Reputation Management, and Analytics Consulting.
From Chiasso’s headquarters, thanks to an international team of almost 30 resources, we cover all major world markets with one goal: provide concrete results. In our portfolio, we showcase customers such as Sky, LG, Paddy Power, Mondadori, Esselunga and Zalando.
The research was conducted based on the Visibility Index of the Sistrix dedicated tool, while the on-site preliminary analysis was carried out through an accurate evaluation of about 40 objective parameters that can be traced back to 14 major areas, thanks to the software Screaming Frog.