MicroHoo: Coming Soon to Your Screen

In case you hadn’t heard the word, Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a partnership agreement that will merge the #2 and #3 search engines effectively into one more powerful search engine with a bit more influence on the search environment. Google, still maintaining the dominant #1 position with over 64% share of the search market will now have to deal with a joint engine (powered by Bing search) that garners around 30%. Is this a game changer to the search engine marketer? Absolutely the answer is yes. 30% share of over 15 billion search queries in the US is a significant volume, and consolidating that under one search engine will require some modifications from search marketers (and online marketers in general). This will impact both SEO and PPC planning, as I will explain.

SEO Impact of Bing and Yahoo Merger

In the world of three major engine, search marketers have had to try to navigate and understand the ranking algorithms of three engines that together deliver 95% of all search engine traffic. Each of the three engines have different core factors that have an impact on rankings, and each of the engines have a different timeframe for making updates and changes. With Yahoo search results soon to be powered by Bing, one thing that will be immediately impacted (either positively or negatively) is the volume of natural search traffic referrals coming in. For SEO folks who had managed to get some positive footing in Yahoo but not much with Bing, there may be a decline in that traffic once the merger is official. For those that had made good gains with Bing but not much with Yahoo, there may be an improvement in natural search traffic. Of course, if a site had managed to perform well in both engines, there may not be any impact.

Yet another option is that Bing rolls out an entirely new ranking algorithm that shakes everything up and leaves SEOs trying to figure out what they need to do to get back on top. Whatever the case may be, the pending merger will likely result in a bit of new discovery for SEO pros as we get used to the new landscape that has 2 major engines rather than one major and two minor.

Paid Search Impact of Bing and Yahoo Merger

For anyone that has spent any time in PPC management on Yahoo and Bing, you know that there are some very key differences between the two. For starters, there seems to be a lot more advertiser saturation with Yahoo, at least as far as it relates to pharmaceutical search marketing. In Bing, we have seen significantly lower volumes, spend and higher click through rate…all signs that it is not a heavily saturated advertiser market yet. Yahoo, on the other hand has consistently showed volume and performance comparable (in a much smaller scale) to what we see from Google. Google and Yahoo are advertising channels that have been around since the beginning of PPC, essentially, while Bing (aka Microsoft AdCenter) is a relatively new channel.

With Yahoo search now ready to be powered by Bing, all PPC campaigns will be running through AdCenter. This means that all the advertisers that had not embraced Bing as the third paid search channel will now be forced to leverage AdCenter if they want to continue running their Yahoo campaigns. This is good news for Microsoft, but likely bad news for pharma PPC campaigns that will see growing cost per click with declining coverage. In the end, it could require MORE money to run PPC campaigns than previously budgeted for, something that folks may not be considering. I know through conversations with other media agencies that will remain nameless that they had not yet engaged Bing as an media channel.They were “waiting to see how it panned out”. Well, now we know how it will pan out and folks that aren’t engaged will find themselves forced into the fold. The big loss for those people is that they will have no built up history and, thus, no quality score in the Bing advertising network. Meanwhile, anyone already engaged in Bing will have some established history and, providing they already had a decent quality score, will have some advantages for the near term.

When will the Microhoo Merger Happen?

According to communications with both Yahoo and Bing reps, this merger will begin somewhere toward the end of the summer with the goal of launching everything before the 2010 holiday season. So, sometime in early to mid Q4 we should see the changes happening and things start shifting. I predict that many will be happy with the merger, and many more will be unhappy. Like it or not, it will be happening and it is the job of search marketers to adapt and strategize based on the new landscape. If you aren’t hearing your search marketing agencies talking about this as a major factor, encourage them to do so and start planning.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Bing Search with Social Twist

I’m not claiming this is new news, however it is something new to me. I haven’t in recent days spent as much time on Bing as I used to, but this week I have been jumping back in to get a better grasp on what’s going on with this newer engine that will soon be #2 in terms of coverage (due to the merger with Yahoo which I will discuss at great length soon enough). The purpose of this blog post, however, is to talk about the ways in which Bing is working to integrate social media into their search results and specifically how it works for health/pharmaceutical SEO.

Note the social links for the top result

If you haven’t seen it either, I’ll explain it very quickly. When I search for a health related term, like allergies, I am given the results as you see here. These social sharing links allow users to quickly share their search results via Twitter, Facebook, Messenger or e-mail. What’s interesting is that you won’t see this on all search queries – it is primarily reserved for health-related topics and also for hot new items.

In addition, some searches will sometimes also populate with the latest Tweets that are related to the search query entered. All of this points to the fact that it is inevitable that at some point in time the success/failure of social media and search marketing tactics are closely aligned. With the discussion so heavily focused around social media for pharma, I would argue that search can have a direct impact on the success (or failure) of social media tactics. Search can provide an extra push and an expanded reach beyond emerging social media channels that may not have the same adoption rate by relevant audiences.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Google Launches New “Medication Search” Feature

On June 21st, Google launched a new feature in their search results that could potentially have a significant impact on natural search referrals for pharmaceutical brands in the long term. For the past year, Google has been working on improving the search results for health-related queries, and now they have rolled that out to include medication search queries. Health is by far one of the more prominent categories for which search is leveraged. From my experience, a very high percentage of site traffic to our branded and unbranded pharmaceutical client sites is driven via search (both organic and paid).

What’s the Impact?

For starters, by integrating this new feature into search results, Google believes that it is empowering a better user experience by providing content that users need in a very accessible place. A search for “Lipitor”, for example, displays the below results.

From a pharmaceutical SEO perspective, and more importantly possibly from a pharmaceutical brand strategy perspective, this is not an ideal scenario for the pharma brand. Let’s analyze the results for a Lipitor search displayed in the image above. Prior to yesterday, Lipitor held the #1 spot on Google search results for “Lipitor”. With the new medication search feature rolled out, we are looking at Lipitor now being bumped to the #2 spot. What’s the big deal? Well, the commonly stated statistic is that 46% of all search clicks come from the #1 position, while the #2 result will capture around 12%. For a branded search, which in my experience drives a vast majority of search traffic to the branded site, this could be fairly damaging to pharma brand promotion via SEO.

Let’s say, for example that Lipitor was getting 5,000 clicks to their site when they were in the #1 position on Google. That would mean they received potentially in the range of 11,000 impressions from searches for “lipitor”. By being dumped down to #2, this could result in around 1,300 clicks from that spot, assuming the percentages I just listed are accurate. That’s a drop of 3,700 clicks (which if you are wondering equals a 74% drop in search traffic for the brand search of “lipitor”). Are the results more consumer friendly and beneficial? Possibly, I’m not yet sure. However, this is not exactly a big win for pharmaceutical SEO and pharma brand marketing. The official product site will no longer be the first result a user sees, which to me seems like a not so positive endeavor. If someone searches just for “Lipitor”, I would think usability-wise it would make sense for the official site to be the first clickable result rather than links over to a government site.

I will be watching closely the impact this change has on client traffic from the brand phrase over the next few days/weeks and will follow up if any glaring information jumps out at me. My theory is that referrals from “brand” searches will drop significantly, but time will tell.

Google TV Announced at Google I/O

Today at Google I/O, Google made the announcement that many people were anticipating and waiting for – Google TV. Their tag line – “TV Meets Web. Web Meets TV.” Partnering with various device makers including Sony, Logitech, Intel and Dish Network, the new Google TV will launch in the fall of 2010 (however, the platform for developers won’t launch until 2011). A few key features worth noting about Google TV:

• Built on Android 2.1 initially (will be upgraded later)
• Will use Google Chrome Web Browser
• Will also be enabled with Flash 10.1 (take that Apple!)
• Android apps WILL work on Google TV using 2 frameworks: web apps and Android Apps
• A new SDK is coming for Google TV (as I mentioned to be launched in 2011)
• YouTube will be launching a new product for Google TV – Youtube Leanback (Youtube for big screen viewing)

That’s enough of the features. As an Android user and someone that believes Android has a strong growth opportunity, this announcement is extremely exciting for me. By partnering with companies like Sony and Intel, and creating a retail partnership with Best Buy, Google TV could be set for a strong uptake. That is, as long as the sticker price isn’t too high. We are still living in a economic crunch so I fear a big number on the sticker will hamper this launch, but there will be some excitement.

One of the cool things to me was the fact that my Android phone will be able to “talk” to the TV, and not just mine (I say this assuming I have the TV of course). Other Android users will be able to program their phones to talk to the Google TV as well. Below is an announcement video for Google TV that can be found on YouTube.

I think one thing that needs to be considered is that this launch opens up the door to a hole new type of audience for Google advertising. More to come there!

For some other resource, here’s a few links:
Google TV – Official Page
Follow @GoogleTV on Twitter
TechCrunch: Google TV Unveiled
Wired: Google Introuduces Google TV, New Android OS

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Google Blocking Pharma Redirects? Not True

This morning, I read a couple blog posts from some well respected bloggers and pharma marketing folks claiming that Google is no longer allowing pharma advertisers to utilize vanity URL redirects for paid search ads. This was first pointed out to me on John Mack’s blog (http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-no-longer-allows-pharma.html). In this post, Mack is talking about how Google is no longer allowing the use of this tactic for pharmaceutical search marketers, and he is stating things as fact. Many months back (when the letters were first issued last April), Mack hypothesized that the use of vanity URLs could be something that the FDA would come down on next. While this may still be true, currently the answer is that they have done no such thing.

Use of vanity URL in paid search

Through a little research, you will find that there are plenty of live examples of pharma companies utilizing vanity URLs in paid search ads. For example, a search for “type 2 diabetes treatment” will show a number of ads. Two of the highlighted ads are BRANDS utilizing vanity URL redirects in their paid search ads. From a simply strategic perspective by Google, it would be a very poor decision to eliminate this advertising option (unless it was strictly requested/enforced by FDA, which it has not been). From our reps, we received confirmation this morning. Below is their response to our inquiry.

Our policy has not changed: pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to have an exception to allow a URL redirect, which is not currently recognized by our automated system.

In his post, John Mack referred to another blogger who had initially stated the claim that Google is no longer allowing vanity URL use in pharmaceutical paid search ads. In this post, Tyler Ransburgh states that he received a response from AdWords support confirming that Google will no longer have this exception to the rule. As a pharma SEM expert, the first thing I have come to understand is that I know more about the policies than low-level Adword Customer Support. In order to get the actual answer to your questions, you always need to be in contact with AdWords representatives that work within the pharma market (there are plenty. If you work in pharma, you should have a rep).

In any event, the bottom line here is that Google has not changed any policies as of right now. In the future who knows, but right now everything is running as previously.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Google SERPs Update

Google has rolled out new looks and enhancements to their search results making it easier for users to access additional filtering options for faster and smarter searching.  Google believes these features support the expanding needs of their users. In their official post, Google announced their new look, they talk about their goals of re-designing the SERPs and the process that they followed to get to the new look.

The Goal of the New Google Search Results Page

The simply stated goal was to take the design that millions of people use to complete billions of searches each month, and to make it better – to provide a richer user experience. With the many different ways a user can refine their searching, Google wanted to make this experience faster and easier, without sacrificing too much from what the users expect. The result is what we see now during our searches.

The New Interface Described

Note the new three-column layout

The new Google search interface has a three column design, as illustrated in the image to the right. This screenshot shows a query for “allegra”, which results in pretty much your standard results…with enhancements. A few subtle changes were made, but there are a couple primary changes that stand out the most.

1. Google has added what they call a “contextually relevant, left-hand navigation.”  This new menu of search options help users filter and refine their search results to display news, images, video, books, maps, shopping, blogs, real-time status updates, and forum discussions. These are filtering options that were previously available, but they have been brought to the forefront within this new design. While not exactly a new idea (Ask.com started this trend in 2007, Yahoo and Bing have already implemented this on their search results pages).
2. Google has added a “something different” feature within the results page, which essentially shows related or similar searches based on the existing query. Clicking on these suggestions results in a new page of results, which will have its own set of enhancement options based on the new query. This is very similar to the “similar searches” you find on Yahoo and Bing currently.

Impact on Pharma SEO and PPC

My initial take on this enhancement is that it will likely have a slight impact on search user behavior over time. I believe these new enhancements will enable searchers to “hone in” their search without clicking into as many sites (i.e., they will do their preliminary drilling within search results rather than by clicking various displayed results). Users will be more likely to use these “on the fly” enhancements to get to the point of their search. In some industries, I believe this could have a largely negative impact on the volume of their site referrals from search. However, I would also argue that the traffic from search will be even MORE relevant – for the most part, search already drives the most relevant and engaged users to a site (in my own experience).

I believe this could also potentially have a more significant impact on paid search programs running on Google. Users are much more likely to click on an organic listing than they are a paid search ad (feel free to fact check me if you’d like), and these new enhancements may impact that more. If a user would prefer to engage a site within organic results more, it stands to reason that more engagement within the search results page may impact PPC click-throughs. Maybe I’m wrong here, but that’s my take on it. It could also enhance the user experience by improving the quality of ads displayed and prompting more users to click on the paid ads. Time will tell. I’ll be monitoring this closely and will share any further insights. In the meantime, feel free to leave me comments.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Intouch Solutions Named Agency of the Year

Recently at the Manny Awards, Intouch Solutions was named Agency of the Year, Category III. Executive Vice President Wendy Blackburn announced this on ePharma RX and shared a video that was created for the awards ceremony. Check our her blog post, entitled Social Media Silliness Meets MOA Video Seriousness. I’ve also embedded the video, which can be found on the Intouch Solutions Youtube Channel.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Intouch Solutions Launches New Social Sharing Widget

This week, Intouch Solutions launched a social sharing widget called share>>send>>save. This new sharing widget is described as the “secure, reliable way to socially distribute your approved content across the digital universe”. In some ways, share>>send>>save offers a similar service that you would receive from tools like AddThis, ShareThis, AddtoAny or any of the other social sharing widgets available. The difference between share>>send>>save and other sharing tools is that this tool isn’t dependent upon the mining and selling of user data or injecting 3^rd party advertising into the sharing process.

There are many features of this new social sharing tool that are unique to share>>send>>save, including:

• Spam prevention
• SEO-friendly links
• Cross-browser functionality:
• Compatibility with https or SSL-secure sites
• Comprehensive mobile device compatibility
• Detailed reporting from share>>send>>save analysts
• Customizable to fit site design (colors, fonts, button designs, etc can be customized to fit branding)
• Direct contact to suggest additional features

I have been given the opportunity to add share>>send>>save to pharmasem.com. Please feel free to leave any comments on my blog or contact share>>send>>save directly with your feedback or if you are interested in learning more.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Top 9 Ways Pharma SEO can be Improved

I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a bit lately…the past nearly 4 years to be honest. And while I’ve seen small steps forward and huge steps back, I can safely state that there are still leaps and bounds of improvements that can be made to drive pharma SEM to the next level. While the “sexy” topic is social media and how pharmaceutical companies can engage in the channel, search is one of those “traditional” digital practices that can drive online success and it can help empower social media efforts. So, I’ve created a top 10 list for pharma SEM.

9. Ensure proper canonicalization and avoid content duplication. Canonicalization is a process that, when followed, ensure there is a single search-indexed version of a page. For example, you may have a site http://mypharmasite.com/ and http://www.mypharmasite.com/. These are technically from a technical perspective one site, however if they are not implemented with canonicalization in mind, a search engine may view these as two sites. Technically speaking, you could potentially have a completely different bit of content on each version (although from a usability perspective that would be horrible). In order to avoid this issue, implement 301 redirects from one version to redirect to the other. This will eliminate potential duplicate content issues and will also help improve usability, which will both help your SEO efforts.
8. Incorporate SEO into online press releases and public relations. For pharmaceutical SEO, this could be something that could potentially have a positive influence on short-term and long-term SEO efforts. Online press releases and public relations allow pharmaceutical companies to release new information (as well as counter any potential crises that may emerge as has been known to happen from time to time). Thinking about SEO when crafting these press releases can help improve immediate inbound link popularity and many of those press links will be long-term links that will have ongoing impact on your inbound link popularity.
7. Keep code clean and validated. Clean, validated code is a practice that should be important regardless of search engine access. If you follow best practices for clean and validated code, usability and user experience will be improved with faster pageload time. From a SEO perspective, cleaner code improved code to text ratios, which increases the chances that search engines will crawl through more content on your pages, improving opportunity to get that content counted within ranking algorithms. Search engine bots crawl billions of pages of content, so giving them clean, easy to crawl pages is highly important and valuable.
6. Think about non-traditional content optimization. Optimize images, videos, PDFs, and other formats. Search engines are crawling more and more types of content, so the more that is available, the better the SEO opportunities become. Over recent months, we’ve seen increased search volume around these different types of content, with people seeking out images, videos, animations, powerpoints, excel files, PFDs and more. Pharma sites tend to like these types of content, so it would make perfect sense from a pharma SEO perspective to integrate these into overal SEO strategies.
5. Verify site ownership with search engines and submit sitemap.xml files. From a pharmaceutical SEO perspective, this is one of the first standard practices I would recommend as a basic level of effort. Verifying ownership with search engines can help you accomplish many things, but one of the key things it allows is the ability to submit your own sitemap.xml to each engine. By proactively submitting these to search engines, you can drastically improve crawl/recrawl rate when a new site is launched or if you update content. New sitemap formats also allow for integration of images into your sitemap, which may help improve image SEO efforts.
4. Focus on usability, accessibility and navigation. I’ve mention this several times in this post, and I think it is one of the key things people don’t always associate with SEO. As a pharmaceutical SEO expert, I’d say the perception among some is that SEO is anti usability and accessibility for the users. I personally have heard this from different people in the past, but that perception is very much not true. In fact, I would argue that key principles of SEO are step for step in line with key principles of accessibility and usability. The bottom line is that we want users to find the sites we work on, and we want those consumers to stay engaged with the site. Objectives of SEO are always tied very closely to the analytical goals and objectives.
3. Develop a strategy and process for integrating link building campaigns. One of the core pieces of a SEO strategy that is consistently not considered across the board for pharma websites is the concept of building inbound link popularity. The concept of the Internet is based on the simple idea of hyperlinks. Years ago, search engines incorporated the quantity and quality of sites linking to your site as a piece of their ranking algorithms. To date, pharmaceutical companies have not played a proactive role in improving their inbound link quantity or quality. Developing a process and strategy for incorporating inbound linking as a part of their SEO practices would be a big step forward. This would likely require communication, education and cooperation between SEO agencies and regulatory committees.
2. Make your content shareable across as many channels as possible. For pharmaceutical SEO purposes, taking baby steps to engage social concepts can have a positive role. Not only are pharma companies gently entering the social space. I have seen quite a few pharma sites starting to implement these social sharing widgets and I know that there is a lot of buzz around this topic. The only thing I really have to say about it is that social and search are tied very closely and can symbiotically increase overall online visibility, perception and reputation.
1. Create unique and engaging content users are looking for. Looking across the board at pharmaceutical websites, you can pretty well predict what type of content is going to be available on a given site based on the disease or condition. Look at a brand site for a diabetes treatment, for example, and you can be pretty certain that they will all have very similar content heirarchy and navigation. All these sites will have the same cookie cutter content. To improve pharmaceutical SEO efforts, pharma companies should embrace the idea that content should be developed to inform and assist consumers. Pay attention to what people are searching for and what people are talking about in the various social channels, and target content to fit those needs.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.

Pharma SEM Added to Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki

It’s been a bit of a delay between posts. My site has now been indexed by Google and Yahoo (what’s up Bing, where you at?!), and I’ve started gaining a few links from good sources. Hopefully getting those links will help my site to continue getting indexed by various search engines. I’m happy to say that Jonathon Richman at Dose of Digital has added me to the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki. You should jump over to check out the new layout of the Wiki and take note of the many new submissions that have been added (including mine). Apparently the first annual Dosie Awards provided some incentive for folks to get their sites added to the list.

Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of Intouch Solutions.