SEO Your Clinical Trial Website for Better Patient Enrollment
Imagine your new clinical trial website showing up on Google page # 1 within six weeks. Follow the essential SEO best practices to ensure your patient recruitment success.
Many biopharma and life science firms are launching dedicated clinical trial websites to increase patient enrollment and build doctor awareness. These custom branded landing pages serve as the “mothership’ for all things related to the study. Who’s sponsoring it, what is being studied, what are the subject eligibility requirements, where are the sites located, etc. Many firms are disappointed to see that after investing and launching these clinical trial sites, the pages are not showing up in a Google search. If it does show up, it’s on page # 17.
Why Can't My Corporate Website Serve as a Clinical Trial Landing Page?
Some may ask, why don’t I simply create a clinical trial page within my corporate website? The reason is simple, your company website will likely perform better in Google as a corporate entity. If you truly want to surge patient awareness and enrollment, you must create a separate clinical trial SEO-friendly site that focuses solely on the study. Doing so ensures Google recognizes this new domain as its own entity. Also, do you really want patients exploring your pipeline and c-suite leadership, only to be distracted and click away from your site? The answer is "no." You want to help these folks focus on what's most important -- your clinical study.
The Importance of good SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential tool for increasing clinical trial awareness and driving website traffic for patient enrollment. SEO can be implemented in various ways to improve search engine visibility and enroll patients into a given study. Below are a few steps you should take to improve your site.
SEO Keyword Search Volume Report
One way to start building a proper SEO strategy for a clinical trial website is to conduct an SEO Keyword Search Volume Report. This report will reveal the most popular terms folks are searching for on a monthly basis. We can guess at what those keyword and phrases might be, but it is better to understand the exact key phrases and “fish where the fish are.” Analyzing keyword trends and target keywords relevant to the clinical trial is the first step in determining which search queries the website will appear for. Doing so allows you to identify relevant keywords and phrases to target throughout the website. This research should be first and foremost.
Below is an example of how important keyword search volume analysis is. Some may say people interchange the words "Clinical Trial and Clinical Study" and search for both in a Google search. Based on the analysis below, this is not the case. Far more people search for "Clinical Trials" over studies. Therefore, the key phrase "Clinical Trial" should be used to help a site rank higher for what people are searching for.
Keyword Infusion
Once keyword research and analysis has been performed, it is important to include these keywords and phrases in the website’s content. This will not only help search engines better understand and rank the clinical trial website, but will also help potential clinical trial subjects more easily find relevant content on the website.
On-Page SEO Optimization
Meta data title and description tags, H1 and H2 heading tags, and alt tags are all important aspects to consider when optimizing a clinical trial website for SEO. Metadata helps search engines like Google and Bing to categorize website content by topics, while the headings and alt tags are important for providing users with a clear understanding of the website’s content. Emphasizing keywords in the titles and headings will make them more likely to show up in search engine results. This is also a critical part of a website’s ability to comply with ADA compliance.
Additionally, it is important to make sure the website’s URL structure reflects the content. URLs should be descriptive, contain relevant keywords and should be tailored to the content on the page. This will make it easier for users and search engines to navigate the website, and in turn, improve SEO and patient enrollment.
Link Building
Lastly, link building is key to a successful SEO strategy. It is important to build quality links from other trustworthy websites in order to improve the website’s visibility and rank in major search engines. Building a linking strategy must be done organically. Doing this through buying or renting links can actually harm your SEO performance.
Avoid WordPress when building your clinical trial website at all costs
Originally built as a blogging tool, WordPress is a popular CMS design platform for building sites. Yes, it's free, but as of 2024, it's also the most hacked website platform in the world. Recovering your corporate website from a
malware attack
is bad enough, but having your clinical trial site attacked can cause flags with HIPAA compliance and compromise your patient data. WordPress is responsible for
83% of all hacked websites. Contact Trial
AMPlify
for a safer, more secure HIPAA compliance website solution.
WordPress is Responsible for 83% of Hacked CMS-Based Websites
Summary
SEO is essential when it comes to clinical trial patient enrollment marketing. Running Google ads and promoting the site on social media in parallel is an excellent way to surge subject recruitment and fill your pool quickly. Design and develop your site on a safe, cloud-based CMS ideally hosted on Amazon AWS servers.
FREE Clinical Trial Website SEO Analysis Report
Trial AMPlify, a leader in patient recruitment marketing, expertly designs clinical trial websites and SEO’s them for optimum visibility impact cross the web. If you already have a study website up, we offer a free SEO report to show you the areas you need to make it perform better in the SERPs. If you are looking to design a clinical trial website from scratch, please reach out to us. We'd be happy to engage with you.
