This document provides an overview of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies for medical writers and editors. It discusses the importance of SEO for connecting content with target audiences. The presenters explain basic SEO terminology like keywords, keyword tail length, and Google's index. They provide an example of developing an SEO content strategy for a hospital network. The document also covers developing an SEO content plan, keyword research, content optimization, and measuring performance. Overall, the document aims to educate medical professionals on SEO best practices to help people find and engage with important health information online.

1. Optimize Your
Online Content
SEO Toolkit for Medical Writers and Editors

2. A Little About Us
Sara Wuillermin
Senior Editor
www.linkedin.com/in/sarawuillermin
Nicole Hess
Director of Strategy
www.linkedin.com/in/nicolecheriehes
s

3. What We’ll Cover
➔ What SEO Is
➔ Why it’s Important
➔ Strategy & Execution
➔ Measuring Results
➔ Q&A
➔ Resources

4. What SEO Is

5. SEO is getting
traffic to your
site by being
here

6. Why SEO Is Important

7. 72 % of Americans
search online for
health information

8. 50% schedule an
appointment based
on what they find

9. SEO as Inbound Marketing
“Organic Search Is Actually
Responsible for 64% of
Your Web Traffic”

10. We have a
responsibility.
And an opportunity.

11. Basic Terminology

12. Keywords / Key Phrase
A keyword (also known as key phrase) is what someone types into this search box.

13. Keyword Tail Length
Short tail Long tail
Tip
70% of all searches are
for long-tail keywords.
However, most CEOs
get excited by the high
search volume of
short-tail keywords.
Your challenge awaits!

14. Keyword Tail Length
Short tail Long tail
@aaronfriedman

15. Google’s Index
That’s a lot of indexed sites for one keyword!

16. Keyword “nursing shoes”
ads
SERPs
The list of results that appear
when a keyword is searches is
called the Search Results Pages
(SERPS)
There can be both ads and
“organic” results on SERPs.
organic

17. Keyword “nursing shoes”
ads
Ranking position #1
Ranking position #2
Ranking position #3
Organic Rankings
The order in which a site appears
in the organic part of a SERP is its
organic ranking position.

18. Google Changes, and Keeps Changing
A note on Google’s algorithms and updates.
4 updates in 4 years:
Panda
Penguin
RankBrain
“Possum” (name TBD)
Lesson learned?
Good content always, always wins.

19. Google Scholar
Google wants scholarly articles.
Options for individuals,
universities and journals to
submit to Google Scholar with
minimal effort.

20. Google News
Write medical content for a non-
medical site?
If it’s newsworthy, Google News
wants your content.

21. AMP
Google wants to deliver a faster
mobile experience, so it created
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if
pages take longer than 3 seconds to load
The average load time for mobile sites is
19 seconds over 3G connections

22. SEO in Action

23. Hospital Network
of 40+ Locations
Situation:
40 hospitals in 6 states
Many offered the same services
and treatments
Goal:
Increase organic SEO traffic to
each hospital

24. Hospital Network
of 40+ Locations
Steps:
1. Define specialties for each hospital.
2. Identify words that patients would search.
3. Map out geographic overlaps of hospitals.
4. Develop content strategy.
5. Implement new copy.
6. Track and measure results.

25. Results
Developed 50 unique content pieces
• One-fourth of original number of pages,
pre-SEO estimate
Increased rankings and traffic for
targeted hospital services
Content first redesign for all hospitals
• SEO + Content even led the redesign
kickoff call

26. Why is SEO important for you?
Connect your content with
the right audience
Use data to help people find
the content that best
suites their needs
It’s up to you to guide how
users find your content

27. Developing SEO
Content Strategy

28. Full SEO Plan
Strategy Copy Optimization
Technical SEO
Link Building
Keyword Selection
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Review Results

29. SEO Content Strategy
In 4 Steps

30. The Assignment.
What is the assignment?
- Draft a new page for “Echocardiography”
Why is copy being assigned?
- To get more echocardiograms scheduled every week
Tip
Find out the main goal for
the assignment before
creating the copy→
Sometimes the “ask” and
the actual “want” might
require a different
approach for content and
SEO.

32. 1. Define Goals
“SMART” Goals:
Specific
Measurable
Actionable
Relatable, and to occur within a specific
Time
By writing a new page for the echocardiogram test we will increase
traffic by 25% over 3 months and gain 2 new Web inquiries per month
starting in 90 days.

33. 2. Identify Target Audience
Who is your Audience?

34. 3. Determine Desired Interaction
How should the audience feel after reading the content?
Informed, reassured, ready to get the test done
Where should the audience go after consuming this content?
To the Schedule an Appointment page
How will they get there?
Custom image with link “Click here to schedule your appointment”

35. 4. Competition
Check out competitor pages for:
● Inspiration
● Things to avoid
● What their SEO targets are

36. Doing SEO

37. SEO Content Plan
Strategy
Identify audience, needs,
goals, and UX constraints
Keyword Selection
Determine the words they
are using to find your new
cardiology content
1. 2.

38. You can make more friends in two
months by becoming interested in
other people than you can in two
years by trying to get other
people interested in you.
- Dale Carnegie

39. Keyword Research:
Get interested in what
people are searching for.

40. Brainstorm
Think of all the words
someone may use to search
for the particular page.
Write them down.
- Echocardiogram
- What is an echocardiogram?
- Stress echocardiogram
- Echocardiogram vs. ekg
- Echocardiogram near me

41. Go to the Tools
Answer the Public.
Mission: Get more ideas

42. Answer the Public

43. Go to the Tools
SEMrush
Mission: Get search volume data
Mission: Research the
competition

44. SEMrush Dashboard - Keyword Search Volume

45. SEMrush Dashboard

46. Go to the Results
Google.
Mission: Not only to make good
content, but make it better than
everything else that’s out there.

47. echocardiogram

48. Review the search results for the keyword.
- Can our content outrank what’s already there?

49. Review Content Outline
Determine which keywords make the most sense to add for
your page.
Use keyword Echocardiogram?
- Yes.
What sites rank now?
- General ones
Will we have a chance to rank for it?
- Not likely

50. Transesophageal
echocardiogram

51. Review the search results for the keyword.
- Can our content outrank what’s already there?
Tip
Use the results to get
more ideas.

52. Review Content Outline
Determine which keywords make the most sense to add for
your page.
Use keyword Transesophageal echocardiogram?
- Yes
What sites rank now?
- Hospital, some general ones
Will we have a chance to rank for it?
- Yes

53. List of Keywords to Target
Keyword Tail Length Search Volume Competition To rank for?
echocardiogram short 74,000 General sites Not likely
Transesophageal
echocardiogram
mid 5,400 Hospital sites,
some general
Yes
Stress echocardiogram mid 2,400 Hospital sites Yes
How much does an
echocardiogram cost
long 260 General sites Possible
How is an
echocardiogram done
long 170 General sites Not likely

54. Content Optimization
Using target keyword
strategically in copy.

55. SEO Content Plan
Strategy
Identify audience, needs,
goals and UX constraints
Copy Optimization
Develop the copy with SEO
best practices
Keyword Selection
Determine the words they
are using to find your new
cardiology content
1. 2. 3.

56. Now where to put
the keywords
Metadata
Meta Title
Meta Description
Body Copy
URL Structure
Headings (H1, H2s)
Images
Alt Tag

57. The H1 title has no length requirements.
Include target keyword.
Ensure the H1 Tag is different from the meta title and meta
description AND ensure there’s only one per page.
SEO for Titles (H1)

58. SEO for Body Copy
General rule of thumb is 500 words is the minimum.
Include 1 target keyword in the first paragraph.
There’s no ideal # of keyword variations to use.
Google punishes keyword-heavy content with no real
substance, called “thin content”.
Make sure there’s a call-to-action (CTA) in the page

59. Interlinking
Makes it easier for search engines to find and crawl more pages
Builds a better semantic understanding of an entire site
Passes page value from the main piece of content or web page to
the pages it links to
Think before you interlink:
- DO link to other internal pages that are relevant to the
topic of the page and/or helpful for the visitor to the page.
- DON’T link to other pages immediately. Wait until the
second or third paragraph.
- DON’T link to external sites you don’t trust. This could
tell search engines that you aren’t providing real value to
searchers.

60. SEO for Meta Title
Limit title tag to 55 characters. (Moz’s Preview Tool)
Include target keyword 1-2 times.
Write keywords into title tags using natural language.
Title Tag Writing Best Practices
Capitalize Each Word, It’s okay to use “&” instead of “and”,
Punctuation rules need not apply. Grammar should be like that of a
book title. Make it unique. It should be different from your other
pages’ meta titles, as well as different from competitors’ meta titles.

61. SEO for Meta Description
Limit meta descriptions to 155 characters.
Include target keyword 1-2 times without being repetitive
and without keyword stuffing.
Meta Title Writing Best Practices
Make it unique. It should be different from your other pages’ meta
descriptions, as well as different from competitors’ meta
descriptions.

62. Deliverable
Cheat Sheet

63. Measuring Performance

64. SEO Content Plan
Strategy
Identify audience, needs,
goals and UX constraints
Copy Optimization
Develop the copy with SEO
best practices
Technical SEO
Ensure page code
optimized
Link Building
Promote content worthy of
being shared (linked to)
Keyword Selection
Determine the words they
are using to find your new
cardiology content
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Review Results
Measure performance

65. Remember “SMART” Goals:
Specific
Measurable
Actionable
Relatable, and to occur within a specific
Time
By rewriting the copy of this page and supporting “cardiology pages”
we will increase traffic to this page by 25% over 3 months and gain 2
new Web inquiries per month starting in 90 days.
Goal Tracking

66. Google Analytics (GA)

67. Tracking organic performance of a post
before and after SEO
Link: http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog/2016/07/introducing-url-performance-tool/

68. Recap

69. Why is SEO important for you?
Connect your content with
the right audience
Use data to help people find
the content that best
suites their needs
It’s up to you to guide how
users find your content

70. SEO as Inbound Marketing
“Organic Search Is Actually
Responsible for 64% of
Your Web Traffic”

71. We have a
responsibility.
And an opportunity.

72. Thank you.
bit.ly/amwa-seo

73. Resources
➔ Template: Content Request Form
➔ Template: Content + SEO
➔ SEMrush
➔ Answer the Public
➔ Google Scholar
➔ Google News
➔ AMP Setup in 15 Minutes
➔ Keywords and Topics Webinar
➔ Technical SEO