Congrats to Wendy and all other winners of the 2011 Dosie Awards.

Search marketing is about monitoring user behavior trends and designing a strategy that feeds off of the findings from that information. For me, search marketing is about understanding what people are discussing and what types of information they are looking for. It’s about looking at HOW people search for information on those particular topics, and taking that information to craft a search strategy. The information helps to develop a content strategy and it helps to guide in the content creation process by providing a topical focus for the page content.

Now is the time to talk about social media and the various ways in which these new channels can be leveraged to drive overall brand awareness and engagement, but search marketing is the foundation upon which much can be built. Follow the “content is king” mantra that originated with search marketing many years ago, and I am confident that you will see social media engagement and success. Social media channels are how people are conversing with each other now, and search engines like Google/Bing have taken many social indicators to amplify and improve search results for users. The recent update to Google Social Search is the latest example of why social and search need to be closely tied together as a strategic approach.

Search is a consideration to be included in any discussions about what you are doing online via website enhancements, social media engagement, mobile web optimization or any other of a number of topics. It’s not only about the content, it’s about making sure that content is accessible and “shareable” to the general public. I’m just saying. If you are launching any effort on the web, keep search in mind and consider how you can leverage search findings to enhance your online visibility and performance.

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

I’m using my own recently created PharmaSEM Facebook Page as an example for the things discussed here. Now, if you go to my page please be gentle as I have only started using it as a testing ground and I am most definitely not a designer. Anyway, back to the point – Facebook SEO. The information tab is an excellent place where you can incorporate some of those key SEO criteria that I talk about – keywords. The company overview, description and mission are good areas where you can fill in Facebook page users with important information, while keeping in mind certain keywords. On my page, you will see that I have attempted to use certain key terms that are relevant to why I typically talk about – search marketing, social media, digital marketing, pharma sem, etc.

In addition to these areas, the information page has a place where you can add links back to your business, site or whatever. An important thing to note about Facebook Pages now from a SEO perspective is the fact that each tab is treated like an unique page from Google’s perspective. For example, one of my favorite sites is SEOmoz. SEOmoz has a Facebook page, and within Google I found the below. In this image, you can see that the main page (www.facebook.com/SEOmoz) and the info tab (http://www.facebook.com/SEOmoz?sk=info) are indexed separately as 2 unique pages. The point here is that treating your Facebook site as you would treat any other website is an important consideration. Use SEO best practices and you can increase the potential visibility of your Facebook page within Google, Bing and other search engines.

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

When talking about social media, the primary channels I think about are Facebook and Twitter. So my first sequential series of blog posts is going to dig in with detail to discuss Facebook SEO. My introductory article entitled 7 Facebook SEO Tips for Pharma presented 7 initial ideas for how Pharmaceutical brands and marketers can leverage SEO to further enhance their Facebook visibility through search. While SEO is not a key defining tactic for Facebook Pages, covering some of the core basics can help potentially improve organic search listings for Facebook Pages (which is never something anyone would frown about). There is currently a perceived separation between social media and search engines, but I maintain the stance that search and social can have an integrated and symbiotic relationship.

The first Facebook SEO Tip I presented was a very simple concept that should not be taken lightly – the Facebook Page Name. Your Facebook Page Name is the first, most visibile SEO factor that you can control as the Facebook Page Owner. The page name will serve as the HTML title for your Facebook Page, which is still noted as one of the more obvious and influential SEO factors. The title of a page is typically what is displayed as the clickable link within search results. For SEO purposes, best practice calls for use of primary keywords for use within your title, and this is no different for Facebook SEO needs. Just like for SEO on standard websites, for Facebook SEO it is important to ensure you choose a page name that accurately describes your business or product. If you can use your primary identified keyword/phrase within your page name this will benefit your “score”.

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

#1: Choose a Good Name for your Facebook page
The Facebook Page Name is one of the first and most important things you can define for Facebook SEO purposes. The page name serves as the HTML title for the page, which is one of those key SEO factors to keep an eye on. It’s important to try and make this keyword rich, but not too much so that it seems spammy to users.

#2:Use keyword-rich content to describe your page in the “About this Page” section when you create your page. This section has a 250 character limitation, which may provide some level of difficulties for pharma companies, but it should provide a good opportunity to get at least a couple good lines of text toward the top of the page.

#3: Leverage the “Info” tab to embed important information about your brand, product, or service. The info tab has a section where you can provide links to your web sites, contact information and information about your company or product. All of these are important areas of information that can help your overall Facebook SEO score.

#4: Use the FBML App to customize your page.
The FBML application allows you to create a custom page and/or content on your Facebook Page. For exmaple, you can create a custom landing page. Using this FBLM application, create a page that has SEO friendly content and coding

#5: Build links and fans.
The first, most important thing to do is promote your page so that you can gain more fans. As mentioned above in #3, the vanity URL is an important factor for Facebook SEO and can help you gain visibility in search results. Beyond getting new fans, it is also very important to provide external links to your Facebook Page. Link from your website, blog, social media profiles and wherever else you can get links.

#6: Choose a keyword-rich “vanity URL”.
Once you have achieved enough fans for your page, you will be able to choose a vanity URL (facebook.com/pagename). Logically, this will be your brand or product name, but it may also be beneficial to consider a keyword-rich vanity URL if it makes sense.

#7: Always think about SEO when posting content on your page!
Status updates, photos with captions, events and discussions are all important areas where you can provide some level of SEO to your Facebook Page. Always think about the keywords you want to use and write content that leverages those desired keywords within the text. Link to your site within status updates whenever possible.

I’ll be going into deeper detail about each of these topics in the future.

Pharma SEM Facebook Page

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

While several brands have started leveraging this type of ad, Google also introduced a “product claim” ad that is for non-black box drugs which has not been as quick to adoption. To date, I have been unable to find a single brand that is utilizing the “product claim” ad format, which is essentially the same as the above with the exception that it allows brands to make product claims while linking directly to the full safety information.

In both cases, these are not fully-supported FDA ad formats because the FDA has not yet come out and said what is acceptable. Everyone in the digital marketing world for pharma is waiting for the FDA to come out and say what is and is not acceptable, but until then we are all just guessing.

Additional Google Ad Formats

Google has also introduced a variety of ad formats for search that could be very beneficial for pharmaceutical marketers engaged in search advertising. These are formats that aren’t specifically defined for pharma, but they could add a lot of value. The first ad unit I’ll bring up is the “contact form” ad unit. For pharmaceutical marketing, this ad unit could be used to initiate a customer support call or something along those lines. The uses of the ad unit could be better defined, but the opportunity is interesting for pharma companies. See example for Jenny Craig below.

The second ad unit I’d suggest as a pharma-friendly ad unit would be the “SiteLinks” ad unit which would allow marketers to add deep links to internal pages within the paid search ad.  You can find Propecia using this ad format as seen below.

There are additional ad formats for mobile search marketing that I will reserve for a future post about that specific topic.

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

Secondly, search marketers must be analytically driven in order to be able to look at the numbers and quickly identify if the current search campaign is working as anticipated. When talking about paid search, a search marketer must be able to see the data and identify what strengths and weaknesses are there, and to provide recommendations on how to improve the weakness while embracing and optimizing the strengths. When consider SEO, it’s all about watching the long-term trend to see if positive growth is coming. It’s about identifying the optimization tactics that have resulted in more user engagement, conversions and success metric completions. At the end of the day, you need to know if your SEO recommendations are yielding results as expected, or if the recommendation was off-base and re-optimization is required.

Thirdly, you need to have a connection to the creative mind. Take your keyword research and provide thoughts on how to create user-friendly content that will also provide good fodder for search engines. It’s important to help writers and designers understand the copy requirements (from H1 headlines to anchor text and navigation links). It’s important to know how to generate appropriate title and meta data that is both SEO-friendly (keyword rich) and has a strong call to action. For paid search, it’s about having the creative knowledge to write text ads that are relevant to the keywords being bid upon as well as to the desired landing page. It’s about creatively adjusting and developing multiple options that can be tested (ties back to the analytical mindset).

Fourthly, a search marketer has to have a solid understanding of technical requirements and where there may be potential search engine barriers due to the technical requirements. A search marketer must be able to tell a developer why a particular method of implementing functionality may be less ideal than another (for example, think javaScript based navigation versus plain HTML…or maybe more relevantly, think Flash versus HTML5). Search marketers should have a solid understanding of general coding practices that are not good for SEO…but not necessarily be able to code a site themselves.

Finally, search engine marketers are some of the folks that are on the cutting edge of digital technologies. Social media, mobile media, video optimization, user experience and content strategy. Basically everything that is done online can be optimized to benefit search results for a brand if strategically planned. Search shouldn’t be thought of as a silo that is only applicable when meta data is needed. If search is considered early enough, it can help impact the bottom line performance (generally speaking in a very positive way).

In a nutshell, a good search marketer is a combination of all these things, and other things not mentioned in detail here. Search marketers are part researcher, part content strategist, part implementation consultant, part web analyst and 100% AWESOME!

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

10. Search Use Continues to Grow
While not necessarily a specific event, the simple fact that search usage continues to climb is very impressive. Users continue to rely on search engines to find the information they are looking for. At the beginning of 2010, search volume estimates from Comscore showed search volume at around 15.1 billion searches. In November 2010 (December #s not yet available), search volume was estimated at just over 16 billion searches. That’s a 5.7% increase in search volume in 2010.
9. Social Search Connection Grows
The connection between social media channels and search engines became even more cohesive in 2010 with the integration of various channels. Google kicked off the year by partnering with Twitter to show real-time tweets on major topics. Bing and Yahoo followed shortly with their own partnerships with Twitter. Bing further enhanced their social media integration by pulling in Facebook Like data into Bing results.

8. Google Medication Search
On June 21st, Google launched a new “Medication Search” feature for branded health searches that was widely accepted as a positive enhancement. This feature is a partnership with NIH that will provide more detailed information about medications directly from the search results page. Now, if you search for a particular drug by brand name, the official product site will no longer be the top result displayed in Google’s results. Through their partnership with the NIH, Google will display government pages containing detailed information about the product (what the drug is, side effects, dose and administration directions, dietary instruction, etc.).

7. Google Instant
On September 8, 2010, Google launched and announced a significant change to the universe of search users – Instant Search. Google Instant is designed to give users faster and smarter results by using predictive search technology that displays results as you enter your search query. Using predictive search technology similar to what powers Google Suggest, Instant will give users more immediate access to their search results on the fly within a single search query. In this example, a user is beginning a search for “Lipitor.” As they continue typing, their search results will change based on the most common search queries using the character combination currently in the search box. As the user continues to type, the results will change on the fly.

6. Google Preview
On November 10th, Google launched a new feature called Google Instant Preview. This new functionality allows user to view a preview screenshot of a website from the search results page of their query.

5. Mobile Search
Mobile search trends have been on the rise through 2010, with over 261% growth in search volume for health-related terms. When I started tracking mobile search volume in December 2009, the volume of was around 3.8 million for the terms I selected. As of October 2010, the volume has surged to over 13.7 million. Google, Bing and Yahoo have embraced the growth of mobile search usage in several ways:
• Google acquisition of AdMob
• Bing Partnership with Verizon
• Android device growth

4. Google Caffeine Launch
While you may not exactly know what Google Caffeine is, it has impacted anyone that uses search engines. Google Caffeine started the wave of what is being more commonly referred to as “real-time search”. This philosophy of real-time search depends on the rapid access and indexation of content by Google (and followed by Bing/Yahoo). Google Caffeine was the initial change that eventually resulted in Instant Search and Google Previews.
3. Bing Yahoo Merger

One of the biggest changes in the search landscape was the merger of Bing and Yahoo into one search entity power by Bing. In early Q3, the merger was officially transition and Yahoo search has been powered by Bing ever since. With the merger of these 2 “top 3” engines, Bing-powered search now handles ~30% of all monthly searches (which we’ve mentioned previously now exceeds 16 billion monthly searches).
The merger of these 2 “search giants” has changed how search marketers function. Search strategy is now planned to cover 2 major search engines rather than 3. This has changed how SEO and paid search tactics are developed, monitored and maintained. The merged search alliance has only been live a few months. 2011 will show what type of impact this partnership will have throughout the year.
2. Pharma Beta Ads
At the FDA Social Media Hearing in November 2009, Google spoke and presented “beta” ad units that could be used for branded pharma advertisers. There were 2 versions of the beta ads presented at the hearing and in 2010 we saw many brands begin rolling these out. The first version is a “black box” beta ad unit which is intended only for drugs that carry a black box warning. An example of this ad unit is below.

The second type of ad is called a “product claim ad” and is used for all other types of drugs. This ad format allows pharma advertisers to make product claims and use the brand name. It also provides a single line of text for warnings, along with a link over to the full prescribing information.

1. YouTube Becomes #2 Search Engine
Online video consumption has grown so rapidly that Youtube has now become the second largest search engine (surpassing Yahoo/Bing).

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

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