May 15, 2023 • 46 mins
🎙️ Welcome to the latest episode of OUTCOMES, the podcast where we delve into digital-first marketing strategies for healthcare and biopharma organizations. Today we’re going "Beyond the Basics: Unconventional Strategies for SEO Audience Targeting in Biopharma." 💊 With over 20 years of experience, our hosts debunk the myths and misconceptions 🕸️ surrounding SEO and highlight its relevance to businesses in the biopharma sector.
With Bill Gadless - Founding Partner of emagineHealth - hosting, our guest for this episode - Brent Williams, emagine's Director of SEO - brings his extensive experience working with healthcare and biopharma clients in the SEO space. He breaks down the common pitfalls marketers encounter, stressing that more traffic 🚦 doesn't always equate to success, and that a well-implemented SEO strategy can provide long-term business value. 💰
Brent encourages a shift in mindset for marketers entering SEO engagement, emphasizing the importance of growing an inventory of assets 📚 aimed at introducing your brand to new users. He also shares the benefits of having a well-rounded content strategy, which includes creating and sharing valuable content from your brand's properties. 📝
The episode takes a more tactical turn as Brent discusses a real-world scenario involving a Contract Research Organization (CRO) looking to grow their service line. He underscores the importance of understanding the audience 👥 and targeting specific terms that align with the services offered.
Finally, Brent examines the impact of AI 🤖 and natural language processing models like ChatGPT on the vast amount of content being created online. He discusses Google's E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) principles and the role of structured data in ensuring the reliability of the content. 💡
🔊 Tune in to this episode for a deeper understanding of SEO in the healthcare and biopharma space, and learn how to leverage these strategies to achieve better outcomes for your organization. 🎯
Thank you for listening to OUTCOMES. Please find more healthcare and biopharma marketing thought leadership in the Insights section of our website and follow us on LinkedIn!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Outcomes, theHealthcare and Biopharma
Marketing podcast, wheremarketing leaders discuss the
most effective strategies forthe health sectors coming from a
digital first AI poweredperspective.
Hello everyone.
I'm Bill Gadless from emagineand emagineHealth.
(00:22):
I have, here with me ourdirector of Seo at Imagine Brent
Williams.
I want to welcome to you, you tothe first episode of our new
podcast Outcomes.
The purpose of this podcast isto share, discuss, and uncover
marketing strategies andtactics.
(00:43):
That lead to better outcomes forhealthcare and biopharma
organizations, outcomes fromtheir marketing and ultimately
better outcomes for patients,which is why this whole industry
exists at the end of the day.
Although we might occasionallyswitch it up, you'll find that
most of the topics we cover willcome from a digital first
(01:06):
perspective with AI playing anincreasingly important role as
well.
Here's what we won't do.
We won't waste time catching upon each other's weekends or
chit-chatting about sports orweather or pets.
Our objective is to deliver themost effective up to date.
Marketing insights based on alot of real world experience
(01:29):
that we live here every day withour clients.
So I'll ask you audience to, tohold us to that.
So without further ado, we'regonna talk today about seo as I
said, Brent here is the directorof of SEO at emagine SEO is an
interesting topic.
(01:49):
It, it always has been.
We've been, we've been doing SEOo here for, for 20 plus years
and it's always been a veryunique topic of conversation.
It's fascinating to a lot ofpeople.
There's always been a lot ofmystique around it.
(02:09):
But I also think it, it's, it'sprobably the topic of, of all
the things that we do here that,that comes with the most
misconceptions.
For some reason, SEO is, it's,it's one of those things that.
Most companies think just isn'trelevant to their particular
business.
That's why here even, you know,20 plus years into the world of,
(02:34):
of, of seo.
I still think far too fewcompanies do any of it or, or
certainly don't do it wellenough.
Since you and I have beenworking together, Brent, now for
few years, I've, I've alwaysbeen impressed with the way that
you talk about seo.
from a, from a strategicperspective, you and I don't
(02:57):
talk a lot about the technicalaspects of seo.
I'm, first of all, I'm, I'm nota very technical person.
Second of all, I don't care alot about what happens under the
hood.
I'm, I'm a marketing person and,And, and, but you always bring.
Very interesting thoughts, andperspectives as to how marketers
(03:18):
should be thinking about s e oand, and ultimately reaching
their audiences.
And, and that's where we'regonna focus here today.
I don't, I don't think we'regonna talk much about nuts and
bolts and tactics with s e o,but really marketing strategy.
so Brian, you, you and your SEOteam, you, you work with a lot
of.
Healthcare and biopharmaclients.
(03:40):
And before we dive into some ofthe, the specific strategies
we're gonna focus on in thisepisode, can you explain to me,
just how, how a typical marketerin, in these industries usually
comes into an s e o engagement?
How they're thinking, and whatsome of the more common pitfalls
(04:00):
and mis misconceptions are.
Yeah, thanks for theintroduction, bill.
you know, one of the, and as Ilistened to you explain our
conversations over the years,it, it brings to mind several
thoughts.
the, the, I'd say the, the onething that people come into it
as with a lot of questions,they're always looking for the,
(04:25):
you know, SEO's always kind ofthis mystery activity that
marketers.
Don't necessarily understand,but they know they need it.
And over the years it evolves.
I mean, heck, month to month, itevolves, with the way the
algorithms and everything work.
But SEO is a long-term process,and it, it's a, it's a
(04:46):
compounding process.
One of the, one of theconversations I have seemingly
at least once a week, is whenyou're.
When you're doing SEO correctly,it's content creation, but
you're designing that contentcreation to reach a specific
audience, and every piece ofcontent acts as a, a target for
(05:09):
that audience.
Over time, that content doesn'texpire.
When you look at other types ofmarketing, you know, you, you do
a, a social post, and then thenext day you have to do another
social post or that traffic goesaway because feeds are
constantly, being updated and,and being fed.
with paid, you, you have to payfor an ad to run.
(05:31):
Once somebody clicks on that oryou close that campaign, you
gotta do it all again.
With seo, it compounds that.
You build a piece of contentthat targets an audience, and
once it settles in at a top posin the top position in search,
it's gonna stay there.
And yes, competition comesalong.
We have to maintain it.
There might take updates, mightneed.
(05:53):
Some tweaking based on the waythat the algorithms work, but it
can be maintained then whileyou're creating the next piece
of content.
And over time you've builtseveral pieces, you know,
hopefully a lot of pieces ofcontent targeting slightly
different audiences, and thatthat continues to work.
(06:14):
And while, like I said, there ismaintenance that has to be done
on that and maintaining that.
You're allowed the freedom tothen keep adding more content,
identifying new pieces ofaudience or new segments of the
industry that you're in, thatyou want to target and, and go
after those on top of all theother stuff that's still
working.
And that's really what, what westruggle with to, to have
(06:39):
clients understand is that SEOisn't just waving a wand.
We have, we have the, the.
The joke in the industry of SEOin a can.
Like I'll just, you know, fix itand it'll work.
And it doesn't, it's acompetitive industry that we're
always competing against beingthe best possible option for
Google's users.
(07:00):
And I'd say when you get intomisconceptions, that's what a
lot of people don't understandis that we're not serving.
Our customers, yet we're servingGoogle's customers and Google
has a reputation of providingthe best possible answer, the
content that has the bestpossible answer.
(07:20):
If they stop holding themselvesto that standard, then their
audience goes away.
They go to other search engines.
Same thing with any of thesearch engines.
They're all competing.
Trying to show the best product.
Their product is hopefully yourwebsite.
And you have to give the bestanswer to that question, and
that's where the competitionlevel comes in is, is being able
(07:43):
to, to look at what is beingrewarded by Google, what Google
has found through theiralgorithm to be the best answer
and provide a better answer or,or a, a more complete answer.
And, and get that userengagement when people click on
your search result.
With your content that show thatsends signals to Google's
(08:04):
algorithm that says, you know,this is serving the need.
And when you back up to thatprogressive, you know,
accumulation of contentinventory over time that builds
up.
You build a lot of authority.
Google sees that your website isserving 50 keywords.
Worth of audience very well.
(08:25):
Well, obviously you'redelivering really good content.
They're going to show you more,build your authority on your
website.
So that's kind of the basis ofwhere we're always working from,
is that the piece of content wecreate today, ideally, and
usually a year from now, isstill generating traffic.
(08:46):
While we've created a lot ofother content along the way,
that's also still working.
In terms of the types of contentand, and search phrases that,
that are targeted, I mean, Iassume it's probably pretty
common.
This is what it was like 20years ago when I was talking to
(09:06):
people directly about their seo,which, you know, I, I never
really knew what I was doing,but, this is when we were first
starting out and.
You know, people come into anSEO strategy and I would be one
of them with certain phrasesthat they wanna be showing up
for when people are searchingfor them.
If use a very simple example,like us, it would be marketing
(09:27):
in healthcare, marketing andpharma.
we actually do come up a lotunder a lot of those types of
things.
However, a lot of, a lot of themost obvious phrases to your
clients are, are, I wouldassume, Just like years ago.
They're, they're not therealistic approach to to, to
getting traffic to their siteand reaching their audiences
(09:49):
because they're gonna be toocompetitive or too broad.
I would assume that is probablystill the case with you and your
team oftentimes, correct?
Yeah.
The, the, we have clients comein and they wanna rank for a
very popular term, and we haveto look at what's being served
to.
(10:09):
People searching for that is it,has Google identified similar
content that is aligns with theclient, the client's product or
service?
a lot of times the intent isn'tthere.
You know, we're dealing a lot inthe, the B2B space as opposed to
the B2C space.
(10:30):
And say you're talking about acondition, Say, asthma, and
you're developing a, a productto serve people that have
asthma, but yet developing thatproduct is different than the
commercialized side of it whereyou're targeting the people with
asthma.
You're, building your product.
(10:53):
Or your service around buildingthat product to a sponsor or to
a, you know, the, the originaldeveloper and maybe your service
is the, the management ofclinical trials, or your service
is the manufacturing of thatproduct.
So the client isn't directlytargeting asthma or asthma
(11:13):
symptoms.
They're targeting asthma,develop asthma therapy, dev
development, and that that's amuch smaller audience.
But that's your audience.
That's the right audience.
So I always like to tell people,you know, more isn't better when
it comes to traffic, when it,just because there's a, a lot of
search volume around a termdoesn't mean it's the right term
(11:34):
for you.
And in a lot of cases it, it, itisn't, the definitely isn't the
place to start because that'snot where your, your clients are
looking.
That's not where your potentialclients are looking.
They're looking for somebody todevelop a therapeutic for
asthma.
As opposed to a therapeutic forasthma.
And there's a, a vast differencein the search results there as
well as, the, the competition.
(11:56):
It could be that there are ahundred people a month looking
for your service and you'replaying in a, a, you're trying
to play in a.
A pool of a thousand hundredthousand, people searching that
is maybe more of a b2c, aconsumer-based, search.
So if we can narrow that downand say that we're not gonna
(12:17):
bring you a hundred thousandusers to this site cuz you don't
need that.
Your audience is a hundredpeople for this, let's target
that.
And we measured the, the valueof that based on the
conversions.
So we, we have metrics set up onthe website.
To to measure.
They landed on this page, theywent to this page, which is how
(12:38):
we directed them to, and thenthey filled out a form or they
clicked a link to call.
And if I can, if we can deliverthe right conversions to you, it
really doesn't matter how manyusers you get on your site, as
long as it's the right users.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And I, I would assume in a lotof cases, You know, marketers
(13:02):
are looking at certain vanitymetrics that are going to
possibly sound most impressiveto their c e o or, or c f O.
I remember one of the, one ofthe first books I ever read on,
on advertising was Ogilvy onAdvertising, and David Ogilvy
said in, in that book that, Thatanybody who, this was back in
(13:26):
the day where print was, was athing and, and, digital wasn't
even here.
But, that anybody who takes outa full page ad in a magazine or
a newspaper is not, is notconcerned with their roi.
They're concerned with thevanity of saying, we got the
full page ad.
and I would assume that when itcomes to all digital marketing,
(13:47):
including seo, that.
Some of the metrics that peopleare concerned with and maybe
holding you and your team tosometimes are.
More, ones that are gonna soundgood and look really good to
their bosses as opposed to theones like you're saying, that
might really mean effectivenesslike conversions and the right
traffic, which might be at alower volume.
(14:09):
yeah, and I, I mean, Iunderstand brand awareness, I'm,
and, and thought leadership.
it's not really where we spend alot of time on the SEO side, but
there is value there that wecan, we can glean from,
sometimes slightly realigningcontent to.
Match a, an audience keyword ofsome kind.
I, I think there's, there's alot of traditional marketers out
(14:30):
there that still go after thebillboard at the busiest
intersection.
And, you know, if you thinkback, and I'm been around long
enough to, to understand thatmentality, we weren't able to
measure a lot of the marketingthat was done 20 years ago.
Even for that matter, 10 yearsago, we didn't have the, the
(14:52):
measurement, of, of the wholemarketing funnel at that point.
So, you know, you spend the mostmoney to buy the busiest
billboard.
You get the most cars driving byhoping that your target audience
is part of that, part of that,that audience going by Now, we
can laser focus content.
(15:12):
At a specific audience based onwhat they're looking for and
what their intent is.
If it's informational, then the,the marketing funnel is gonna be
longer, but it's still a funnel.
We can still guide that throughusing, you know, UX in the
bringing UX into the mix that,Hey, we're getting you an
audience.
Let's see if we can capitalizeon that and improve the, the
(15:35):
conversion rate by say 2%.
We can, if we improve aconversion rate even by 2% at
the level of, of clientele thatwe're, we're speaking to, 2%
might be five more deals withina, a set period of time.
And we're not talking about, youknow,$50 pair of tennis shoes.
(15:55):
We're talking about a hundredthousand dollars opportunities
that, that are being brought tothem that.
May be, you know, lost in themix normally, or, or, or lost
completely cuz we don't havecontent targeted towards that.
So it, it's a matter of lookingat the, the entire revenue cycle
and what that, what that leadmeans to you.
(16:17):
And on the paid media side,that's always something very
much in focus because you buy anad, you get a set amount of
clicks for the amount of moneythat you purchased.
We need to get a, we need to geta definite ROI on that
immediately, or at least havethe metrics behind why, what the
roi, or, you know, what the,what the conversion rate was.
(16:39):
But with seo, we can look atthat on a longer scale and say,
okay, this article is in frontof this audience.
And this audience we havedetermined is, you know, has the
right intent.
They're looking for a service,they're looking for help.
we know that there's only maybe.
You know, 50 people a, a monthlooking for that.
But we know that our conversionrate is 10%.
(17:01):
So once that article's there andis ranking, that becomes a, a, a
reoccurring revenue source atthat point.
That you could be off makingother pieces of content to be
targeting other audiences thathopefully also get a couple
percent conversion and itdoesn't take a whole lot of
maintenance to, to keep all ofthat content going.
So it's the more content you'reable to generate.
(17:24):
That's, you know, thoughtfullycurated through, keyword
targeting and audienceevaluation.
The more you're able to do that,the more, your net expands and
allows more relevant users tocome in and become, become
customers.
Now, the, you know, the exampleyou used where it's about.
(17:45):
Sales and conversions, it couldultimately lead to a hundred
thousand dollars or, or reallymillions of dollars in, in
contract.
If you're talking, you know, bigCROs and potentially managing
clinical trials For pharma, theb2b, price tag can be pretty
high.
But let's talk about other KPIsand, and you know, tell me what
else you guys look at.
(18:06):
Because for instance, like,again, that's pretty, pretty
easy when it comes to a b2b, Idon't mean easy to achieve and
not always easy to see cuz wedon't always have insight into.
the complete sales loop in, inour client's CRM and marketing
automation systems and all that.
But, but in terms of what you'retrying to achieve, it's
(18:26):
ultimately, it's a conversionthat will ultimately lead to sa
lead to sales.
However, talking about a biotechwhere it's their pre-commercial
and some of their objectives arejust to, improve investor
sentiment and investor awarenessor.
Possibly recruiting for, topscientific talent.
so the objectives for theseother companies are not always
(18:48):
about a conversion that willlead to a sale in those cases,
what are some of the other KPIsthat you guys will still look at
and that you consider importantother than just a conversion?
Sure.
so in the past we were a littlebit limited with our scope that
we were able to look at.
So there was, a metric thateverybody kind of hung their hat
(19:09):
on, which was called bouncerate, which means somebody
showed up on your website andthen they left immediately
without, without doing anything.
And that was basically, did thedoor open?
Did they stay?
If not, then you, you know, itmarked against the bounce rate.
What we're seeing is that thatis going, that is.
Pretty much been sunsetted as ofJuly 1st.
That will be sunsetted.
(19:31):
But what we're switching to isactually much, much more
engaging because it's around theengagement of people on your
site.
So it's not enough to just get'em, to get'em there and get'em
to stay.
It's get'em there and get'em todo something else.
And you only do that bytargeting the correct audience.
you know, from the SEO side, wegotta make sure that we're
bringing the right people inbecause if you show up.
(19:54):
On a website, and it doesn'tspeak to what your needs are or
what you're, what you're lookingfor, you're not gonna engage
with it.
So, engagement on a website isanything from scrolling through
the site, staying on that pagelong, you know, longer than a
couple seconds, to clickinglinks, to downloading resources,
(20:14):
to watching videos, listening topodcasts, you know, staying on
that page and engaging with it.
Send signals back to thealgorithm that this user showed
up.
They found what they wanted andthey spent time looking into it.
So taking a website visitor, awebpage visitor from 10 to 20
seconds to.
(20:35):
A minute, minute and a half canhave a real, a, a really a major
impact on your, on yourwebsite's performance.
And that comes from curating theright content that is engaging
multimedia, because everybodyabsorbs content in different
ways.
So having multiple ways of, ofwebsite use and tailoring that,
looking at the metrics of thatengagement of an audience, and
(20:59):
then tailoring more contenttowards that.
So if you understand thatyou're.
Your users really like watchingvideos, then you need to do more
video.
If, if they spend a lot of timelooking at a chart or a graphic
that is informative, then youneed more charts and graphics.
(21:19):
It, it, it just applies kind ofacross the board at that point.
What a lot of people miss themark on is that they'll have
multiple type, multiple segmentsthat they're targeting and
they'll try to apply thoseelements to.
Universally across the site and,you know, say, say, you know, on
the clinical site, say you'vegot somebody that you know
(21:40):
needs, needs a surgery, a, a, aroutine surgery, that's not
gonna take as much engagement assomebody that's researching a
major condition that islife-threatening or, they're
looking for a second opinion.
So they're gonna engage withthat longer.
So you have to tailor thatcontent correctly based on what
you see in that, that segment.
for what, what is engagingpeople?
(22:02):
if I just need to, need to finda second opinion for a
condition.
I don't need a whole lot ofcontent.
I just need to see that you havea second opinion option.
On the, on the other side of it,certain services that you offer,
say in a biotech situation, someof those are well defined and
people know what they are.
They just wanna see yourexpertise at it.
So maybe more case studies,maybe more examples of your
(22:25):
work.
statistics around the work thatyou've done, whereas somebody
that is more informative or it'smore a technical situation, they
may take a longer view of thatand, and need more information
in order for them to beconvinced to, to move to the
next level or to contact you Andto simplify, I mean, it sounds
(22:45):
like basically it's, you know,when it's not all about a
conversion and a sale, it'sdriving people to content that,
you know, you know, based onunderstanding those personas,
their journeys, those audience'sobjectives, driving them to
content that, you know, appealto them, and then measuring your
success based on how muchengagement you had with that
(23:06):
intended content.
right, exactly.
I think from the outside, I'msorry, I'm sorry.
You, you mentioned investorsand, you know, building content
for investors.
You, you have to, to look andsee what they're engaging with,
what's making them want to takethat next step or learn more
about your organization in orderto, you know, make the
investment.
And, and sometimes that's notthe, the nuts and bolts.
(23:28):
Sometimes that's the culture ofthe, the organization.
Sometimes that's the accoladesthat the, the organization has,
has received, statistics behindthe work that's been done and.
And the, the revenue cycle, youknow, that's, that's obviously a
big part of investing is makingsure the company makes money.
so there's, there's all of theseelements and while most of your
content on your site may befocused towards the technical
(23:50):
side, that takes a a completelydifferent type of content.
Potentially than what you're,what you've rolled out for the,
the, the consumer.
you know, your potentialcustomers are much different
audience than what your investoris.
So, you know, basically we goback to identifying the right
audience for the right contentor vice versa.
Yeah, and I think, you know, wepreach it a lot, which is every
(24:11):
company needs to take a stepback before any marketing tactic
and develop their personas,those personas.
Distinct journeys, which are alldifferent from one another.
You know, you're talking, you'retalking investors, patients,
HCPs, B2B buyers.
Again, when we're talking aboutthose B2B companies, employment
(24:34):
candidates, I mean the, theaudiences are endless.
And, and for any marketingactivity, just take a step back,
whether you do itprofessionally, Or you do it in
a couple hours in your ownconference room or on a Zoom
meeting on the back of a napkin.
Take the time to find youraudiences and their journeys,
and that will help you determinethe content that they need,
(24:55):
which is instrumental to anymarketing strategy, whether
it's.
Content marketing, seo, paidsocial, your website, and so
forth.
And then the whole, from anoutsider again, who's not an, an
SEO o person like you and, andyour team.
You know, I'm just seeing theimportance of data analytics.
Coming more and more into playand how much more complex that
(25:18):
is for you.
More because you simply havemore, more data to look at and,
and more KPIs to, to define andmeasure.
whereas, you know, again, goingback.
A decade or two, it was, well,where am I ranked under this
phrase?
and you know, how much trafficam I getting under that phrase?
Which is, you know, it's still,I know that's still a K P I, but
(25:41):
there's so much more to it.
And now with AI coming into playand.
And, and ways to do, dataanalytics at a whole other
level.
you know, that in itself is, isa, is a podcast topic that, that
we'll have to get to.
So, you know, moving on, I'dlike to like, use a, use a real
life example and, and not a realexample in that.
(26:03):
I don't want you to re revealanything about any specific
clients, obviously, but, wereference CROs as, as, as a
general example here becausewe've always, we've always done
a lot of work with CROs, andsorry for anybody who's sick of
all the acronyms, but that's acontract.
Research organizations.
These are the companies thatmanage clinical trials and all
(26:23):
of the data, for biopharmacompanies that are developing a
drug.
And, and so we've, we've alwaysworked with a lot of CROs, so
Brent, if you.
Let's just use an example like acro, r o.
again, this is B2B and so, sopretend a new c r o was coming
in for an SEO engagement today,and they had usually, you know,
(26:44):
a CRO is gonna have a number ofdifferent services and solutions
that, that they're selling.
But they want to grow thisparticular service line.
And they've given you that, thatset of phrases, they've told you
a little bit about thoseparticular audiences.
Walk me through that real worldscenario in, in working with you
or one of your team members interms of.
(27:07):
You know, how you would go aboutformulating a strategy and, and
targeting their appropriateaudiences in, you know, one of
the things that, that we wannatalk about here is in
unconventional ways, ways thatthey might not be coming into
it.
Thinking of, and giving themdifferent perspectives, other
than just again, the obvious wewant to show up under this
(27:30):
phrase.
So just walk me through thatconversation.
Well, you know this, this is avery common situation where, you
know, we need to apply industryor what the industry's doing,
where the audience is.
If your audience is calling aspecific service by a name, it's
(27:59):
fine to add branding to thatname or, or, Put your own spin
on it, but you still have totalk about what the audience is
talking about.
the, the, the algorithm servessearch results mechanically, you
know, it measures the, the, therelevancy of content,
(28:20):
mechanically.
So it's, it's basically does,does this string of characters
that equals this term.
Appear on the content thatwe're, we're evaluating here,
and if you don't call it whatyour audience is calling it,
it's not gonna show up.
And it, it seems like an obviousstatement, but the, the, the
(28:41):
spin that is put on to enticethe audience on page.
It doesn't always equate to thecontent that, or to, to the
content that the, the algorithmsare looking for.
So, you know, it, it's a kind ofa, a, a joke in our realm is,
(29:01):
you know, if you wanna rank forit, you gotta talk about it.
And that sounds, again, thatsounds very simplistic, but that
is something we run into a lot.
The other thing that a lot ofpeople don't want to talk about
are the basics of their industryto build that authority around.
The, around the topics thatthey're really pushing, you
know, the services that they'rereally pushing.
(29:22):
So you don't, it, it seems likepeople wanna stay away from the
basics of the industry andalways be the cut on the cutting
edge of thought leadership andinnovation.
When that's fine.
Like I said earlier, you know,we, we support that by all, by
all means.
cuz that has a lot of marketingvalue.
But I always put myself insomebody that just got the job
(29:43):
wherever it is.
you know, a as the potentialclient, and I don't fully
understand the industry, I'mlooking for those basic terms
and definitions.
And, and the idea is, is that ifyou're the one that provides
that in a, in a way that helpsthem do their job or understand
their job better, that buildstrust and and authority with
(30:05):
that person.
And.
They're gonna be the ones thatre you know, you're gonna be the
one that they remember when theyneed a provider for that.
and the algorithm's kind of thesame way that you can't just
throw a, a piece of content outthere that is not connected to
anything else on your websitethat demonstrates authority and
expect a rank for it withouthaving supporting content around
(30:28):
all of the other things that,that, make up that, that term.
So, You know, aspects of it,treatments, therapeutics,
experience, all that stuff hasto be well orchestrated on the
site and architected in order tolead to that, that main sales
pitch of this is what we do, wedo it very well, we've got a lot
(30:50):
of experience and we really wantto help you.
That's fine to have that, butyou gotta have all the
supporting content that, thatexpands the, the footprint in
order to bring those people infrom the fringes that, that
aren't directly looking for yourbrand and your service.
And, and you know, when you talkabout back to the beginning when
we talked about misconceptions,that's one of the biggest
(31:11):
misconceptions is that I wantthis page to rank.
Not only rank for search terms,but I also want it to be the
sales page.
And that those two don't alwayswork together.
You gotta lead people throughthe journey.
Yeah.
And these, you know, this partof the conversation again, is
where I've always justappreciated the value that you
(31:32):
bring, because again, I know abig part of the value that any
seo.
Firm or an SEO person is gonnabring to a company is, is a lot
of the technical knowledge.
Again, a lot of the tactics thatare going on, but.
But you really, you, you needthe right strategy and approach
(31:54):
to your audiences in, inthinking about the ways that
you're gonna reach them, asidefrom, you know, how you're
optimizing a title tag and, and,and what technical things you're
doing under the hood.
Again, it's, it's it all, it'sall about the audiences, and,
and how you're gonna reach them.
So, I wanna shift gears a littlebit and thank you for all of
that.
(32:14):
and talk a little bit about, Imean, the thing that, that
everybody's talking about, whichis ai, and how, I mean, first of
all, we as an agency are, areleveraging AI across all of our
competencies at the moment.
And I'm not gonna claim we havethat fully fleshed out.
We're, we're all figuring out,like everybody is, and it's
(32:36):
moving rapidly.
but that's across buildingwebsites.
It's branding, it's content,it's seo, it's paid, it's
social.
so.
We're leveraging AI across allof our competencies.
But I want to, this is an SEOepisode here today, and I want
to hear from you a little bitabout your thoughts, what you've
seen so far, maybe questionsyou've had from clients and how
(33:00):
your team is, you know, startingto leverage some of that
technology.
And, and, and even one specificquestion, because we've been
chatting with a few, A fewmarketers out there about it and
people are even wondering, notjust what does this mean?
How can AI benefit what SEOmeans today?
(33:21):
But is AI and chat G P T goingto affect what SEO even means?
In other words, someone askedus, do I need to be found under
chat G P t?
Like, is that another?
And I know it's integrated withwith Microsoft search engine.
Bang or edge or whatever they'redoing with their search engines
right now.
So Microsoft's got itintegrated, so it, it does mean
(33:43):
something over there in terms ofwhat search even means.
so, so kind of a multi-prongedquestion.
you know, is it gonna change inyour opinion?
No one, no one has these, theseanswers.
Is it gonna completely changewhat search even means?
And then talk a little bitabout, you know, what you guys
are doing today.
Sure.
So, AI is like the acceleratorfor seo.
(34:09):
there's a lot of behind thescenes work that we do that AI
is, is cutting a lot of cornersfor and will continue to en
enhance that.
But the, the biggest impactwe're seeing is that there's
just a flood of content becausecontent's so easy to generate
now.
there's always been hacks and,and methods to mass generate
(34:30):
content.
But it wasn't as intelligent asit is now.
So we're seeing this flood ofcontent hitting the internet
that doesn't necessarily haveany authority, doesn't have the,
background to, to, to build itup over time.
It's just being dumped out thereand, you know, all the search
(34:52):
engines are combing through it,even though they're, they're all
engaged in ai.
They're having to comb throughthat, cuz again, they still want
to deliver the best possibleoption.
Google has done a complete 180on AI over the last year,
whereas they.
They said that, you know, wereally don't want AI content to
be in our search results to, wedon't care who wrote it or what
(35:15):
wrote it.
We want the best possiblecontent.
And if that's being generated byAI or if that's being generated
by, lab physician, that.
That is, is signing off oncontent or writing it?
We, we don't care as long asit's what our users want.
You know, that's, that's the,the metric there.
(35:35):
Is it engaging with, for ourusers?
Is it delivering them theinformation they're wanting?
So what we're doing is we'reusing AI to, to look at those
signals.
On a website and make sure thatthey're there, make sure that,
that your content not only isbetter than the other content
that's out there, but has those,those signals that, that verify
(35:59):
that that.
Yeah, somebody that, that knowswhat they're doing, somebody in
a position of experience andeducation has reviewed this.
you're a real organization asopposed to just a pop-up website
meant to, get search results,and, and, and add those
validating factors to the site.
some of those are behind thescenes.
Some of'em are, are onsite and,luckily there's mechanisms in
(36:22):
place for that.
Structured data is a big part ofthat.
Not only are we leveraging.
AI to create structured datawith, with the elements, all of
the elements we need, without a,without as much testing as we've
had to do in the past.
But we're using that to, tobolster those signals that to,
to the search engines andultimately the ai, that this is
(36:45):
the best possible source for youto include in your.
Your results, whether those aresearch results or, or, you know,
via a chat.
And, you know, luckily that'ssomething we've been focused on
for a long time is, is makingsure those validation signals
are there and are, you know,properly formatted and, and
understandable.
(37:05):
But by doing that, we've kind ofput everybody ahead of the curve
that we, you know, that we'reworking with on these things
because.
When the AI starts looking forbetter sources, I mean, this,
it's, it's, it's just a moreadvanced algorithm that is
looking to deliver the bestanswer possible and the most,
most trustworthy optionpossible.
(37:26):
Our clients will be there.
You know, they've got thosesignals, they're already set up
with the structured data, atleast the basics to, to build on
and, and, and improve their,their position as being the one
that, that provides theresources to the AI for, you
know, anything and anything intheir industry and become that
(37:46):
authority that the AI comes backto, to look for updates and, and
new information.
So, That's really kind of at thefocus at the center of our
focus.
Plus we're also finding that,you know, content, with AI and a
human eye is a very powerfulthing.
So, you know, you can, you canfigure out what elements need to
(38:08):
be in your content much fasterusing ai.
you can build the framework forgood content.
With ai and then bring the humanelement in to add those
verifications, whether it's a, adoctor review or, you know, a, a
marketer's eye to add some, CTAsor called, you know, specific
(38:30):
convertible actions to it.
It, it, it's, it's becomingreally, A super handy tool to Im
make those improvements, muchfaster.
Whereas, you know, before wewere kind of at the mercy of,
of, of the process and itshortcuts the process and allows
us to do a lot more work, a lotbetter work faster.
Mm-hmm.
(38:51):
And again, there's so muchunknown.
One of the, so Brett Cohen, mypartner here at Imagine we're,
we're.
Having, again, a lot ofconversations with people, just
hearing their questions, theirconcerns, sharing with them what
we do know about AI and, and,and one of the things he's
telling people is, don't goinvesting much money in anything
AI right now because, It's gonnachange tomorrow, and then it's
(39:14):
gonna change next week and it'sgonna change next month.
This is so new and nothing aswe've all seen, nothing has ever
moved this fast, ever.
and there's, there's a lot ofthings we, we don't know about
SEO and because one of the, oneof the big questions is, you
know, will chat G P t generatedcontent with human editing
(39:37):
without human editing.
Will it be penalized by Google?
I don't think anyone has thatanswer.
There's, I've seen opinions outthere.
I've seen some people post thatthey saw five or 7% lower
ranking with content generatedby chat G P T versus one
completely written by himself.
(39:58):
But I can speak a couple blogposts we've posted have done
well.
So, I mean, it's, it's there.
I don't think anybody has theanswers.
We're all gonna see.
I also was, you know, without,with the AI wards happening now
already we're seeing how that'sgonna shake out and definitely
Google and Microsoft right atthe top of, of that battle.
(40:20):
you know, there could even belegal repercussions if Google
penalizes, chat GP degeneratedcontent because then we're
getting into an antitrustsituation where, Google's,
penalizing people that are usingMicrosoft's technology because
they're the competitor.
So again, we'll see.
no one knows for sure where allthis stuff is gonna go, but, but
(40:43):
it's certainly fascinating overthe years I've heard SEO's dead
so many times because tech newtechnology came along and the,
the, the deciding factor there.
And, you know, Google has putout a, a document saying,
Basically what I said earlier,that, we don't care as long as
it serves our customers thebest.
(41:03):
And that's really what it boilsdown to.
So if, if a human is looking forsomething and whether it's in
chat G p t or on being or onGoogle, and it's not serving
their needs, it's gonna sendsignals that say, this is not a
good piece of content.
If you go there and it, it'srepetitive and uses, wrong
(41:25):
terminology.
It's not gonna stick, it's notgonna be a engaging piece that,
that people use.
and so the, the audience isultimately gonna be the deciding
factor, right?
Is, is this content useful,helpful?
Can I trust it?
And if so, it's good content.
(41:46):
Does it matter, you know, whowrote it?
It, it literally just has toserve the purpose.
You can't put up a storefrontand not build a store behind it
and expect to make money, andthat's really what it boils down
to.
I, I can write bad content.
I have written bad content.
I don't like to admit that allthe time, but I've written bad
content that didn't work andjust what didn't serve the
(42:08):
answer, or didn't answer thequestion and serve the user like
it was like, like they expected,and it tanked, and that we're
seeing the same thing with ai.
some AI generated content doesvery well.
it does better with, with thehuman element to filter out,
make it readable, make itunderstandable, make it, and,
and by making it readable andunderstandable, you make it
(42:30):
trustworthy.
And by making it trustworthy,you know, people, people stick
to it and, and they use it andthey share it and they, they
link to it and it, that's thewhole cycle that's seo is, is.
Does your content do what theuser needs it to do?
And if it doesn't, then eitheryou, you don't have good content
or you've targeted it to thewrong person, and all those
(42:53):
signals go back and feed thealgorithm.
Whether that's a, a searchengine algorithm, which, you
know, is a, i, I would say atthis point, an elementary
version of ai or serve the AIalgorithm, which is, you know,
far advanced but still is.
Algorithm that that measuresthe, the engagement of, of
(43:13):
content.
Yeah.
I don't wanna say content isking, but without saying it,
I'm, I'm gonna say it becauseit's still at the end of the day
Absolutely.
It's, it's what it's all about.
What do audiences want, whatbrings value to the person using
that search engine, thatwebsite, everything we talked
here about today, it ultimatelycomes down to.
(43:34):
What content brings value to theaudience.
and I think we'll, we'lldefinitely be talking a lot more
about ai.
I think you and I will have,plenty of future episodes on, on
that topic.
But I think, with that, I wannathank you for all your insights
here today.
This was great, and I'm sure youknow, we'll be bringing you on
(43:56):
many more episodes in the futureas well as members of your team.
so thanks Brent and everybodywho joined.
until next time, thanks forjoining.
Thanks Bill
Welcome to Outcomes, theHealthcare and Biopharma
Marketing podcast, wheremarketing leaders discuss the
most effective strategies forthe health sectors coming from a
digital first AI poweredperspective.
Hello everyone.
I'm Bill Gadless from emagineand emagineHealth.
(00:22):
I have, here with me ourdirector of Seo at Imagine Brent
Williams.
I want to welcome to you, you tothe first episode of our new
podcast Outcomes.
The purpose of this podcast isto share, discuss, and uncover
marketing strategies andtactics.
(00:43):
That lead to better outcomes forhealthcare and biopharma
organizations, outcomes fromtheir marketing and ultimately
better outcomes for patients,which is why this whole industry
exists at the end of the day.
Although we might occasionallyswitch it up, you'll find that
most of the topics we cover willcome from a digital first
(01:06):
perspective with AI playing anincreasingly important role as
well.
Here's what we won't do.
We won't waste time catching upon each other's weekends or
chit-chatting about sports orweather or pets.
Our objective is to deliver themost effective up to date.
Marketing insights based on alot of real world experience
(01:29):
that we live here every day withour clients.
So I'll ask you audience to, tohold us to that.
So without further ado, we'regonna talk today about seo as I
said, Brent here is the directorof of SEO at emagine SEO is an
interesting topic.
(01:49):
It, it always has been.
We've been, we've been doing SEOo here for, for 20 plus years
and it's always been a veryunique topic of conversation.
It's fascinating to a lot ofpeople.
There's always been a lot ofmystique around it.
(02:09):
But I also think it, it's, it'sprobably the topic of, of all
the things that we do here that,that comes with the most
misconceptions.
For some reason, SEO is, it's,it's one of those things that.
Most companies think just isn'trelevant to their particular
business.
That's why here even, you know,20 plus years into the world of,
(02:34):
of, of seo.
I still think far too fewcompanies do any of it or, or
certainly don't do it wellenough.
Since you and I have beenworking together, Brent, now for
few years, I've, I've alwaysbeen impressed with the way that
you talk about seo.
from a, from a strategicperspective, you and I don't
(02:57):
talk a lot about the technicalaspects of seo.
I'm, first of all, I'm, I'm nota very technical person.
Second of all, I don't care alot about what happens under the
hood.
I'm, I'm a marketing person and,And, and, but you always bring.
Very interesting thoughts, andperspectives as to how marketers
(03:18):
should be thinking about s e oand, and ultimately reaching
their audiences.
And, and that's where we'regonna focus here today.
I don't, I don't think we'regonna talk much about nuts and
bolts and tactics with s e o,but really marketing strategy.
so Brian, you, you and your SEOteam, you, you work with a lot
of.
Healthcare and biopharmaclients.
(03:40):
And before we dive into some ofthe, the specific strategies
we're gonna focus on in thisepisode, can you explain to me,
just how, how a typical marketerin, in these industries usually
comes into an s e o engagement?
How they're thinking, and whatsome of the more common pitfalls
(04:00):
and mis misconceptions are.
Yeah, thanks for theintroduction, bill.
you know, one of the, and as Ilistened to you explain our
conversations over the years,it, it brings to mind several
thoughts.
the, the, I'd say the, the onething that people come into it
as with a lot of questions,they're always looking for the,
(04:25):
you know, SEO's always kind ofthis mystery activity that
marketers.
Don't necessarily understand,but they know they need it.
And over the years it evolves.
I mean, heck, month to month, itevolves, with the way the
algorithms and everything work.
But SEO is a long-term process,and it, it's a, it's a
(04:46):
compounding process.
One of the, one of theconversations I have seemingly
at least once a week, is whenyou're.
When you're doing SEO correctly,it's content creation, but
you're designing that contentcreation to reach a specific
audience, and every piece ofcontent acts as a, a target for
(05:09):
that audience.
Over time, that content doesn'texpire.
When you look at other types ofmarketing, you know, you, you do
a, a social post, and then thenext day you have to do another
social post or that traffic goesaway because feeds are
constantly, being updated and,and being fed.
with paid, you, you have to payfor an ad to run.
(05:31):
Once somebody clicks on that oryou close that campaign, you
gotta do it all again.
With seo, it compounds that.
You build a piece of contentthat targets an audience, and
once it settles in at a top posin the top position in search,
it's gonna stay there.
And yes, competition comesalong.
We have to maintain it.
There might take updates, mightneed.
(05:53):
Some tweaking based on the waythat the algorithms work, but it
can be maintained then whileyou're creating the next piece
of content.
And over time you've builtseveral pieces, you know,
hopefully a lot of pieces ofcontent targeting slightly
different audiences, and thatthat continues to work.
(06:14):
And while, like I said, there ismaintenance that has to be done
on that and maintaining that.
You're allowed the freedom tothen keep adding more content,
identifying new pieces ofaudience or new segments of the
industry that you're in, thatyou want to target and, and go
after those on top of all theother stuff that's still
working.
And that's really what, what westruggle with to, to have
(06:39):
clients understand is that SEOisn't just waving a wand.
We have, we have the, the.
The joke in the industry of SEOin a can.
Like I'll just, you know, fix itand it'll work.
And it doesn't, it's acompetitive industry that we're
always competing against beingthe best possible option for
Google's users.
(07:00):
And I'd say when you get intomisconceptions, that's what a
lot of people don't understandis that we're not serving.
Our customers, yet we're servingGoogle's customers and Google
has a reputation of providingthe best possible answer, the
content that has the bestpossible answer.
(07:20):
If they stop holding themselvesto that standard, then their
audience goes away.
They go to other search engines.
Same thing with any of thesearch engines.
They're all competing.
Trying to show the best product.
Their product is hopefully yourwebsite.
And you have to give the bestanswer to that question, and
that's where the competitionlevel comes in is, is being able
(07:43):
to, to look at what is beingrewarded by Google, what Google
has found through theiralgorithm to be the best answer
and provide a better answer or,or a, a more complete answer.
And, and get that userengagement when people click on
your search result.
With your content that show thatsends signals to Google's
(08:04):
algorithm that says, you know,this is serving the need.
And when you back up to thatprogressive, you know,
accumulation of contentinventory over time that builds
up.
You build a lot of authority.
Google sees that your website isserving 50 keywords.
Worth of audience very well.
(08:25):
Well, obviously you'redelivering really good content.
They're going to show you more,build your authority on your
website.
So that's kind of the basis ofwhere we're always working from,
is that the piece of content wecreate today, ideally, and
usually a year from now, isstill generating traffic.
(08:46):
While we've created a lot ofother content along the way,
that's also still working.
In terms of the types of contentand, and search phrases that,
that are targeted, I mean, Iassume it's probably pretty
common.
This is what it was like 20years ago when I was talking to
(09:06):
people directly about their seo,which, you know, I, I never
really knew what I was doing,but, this is when we were first
starting out and.
You know, people come into anSEO strategy and I would be one
of them with certain phrasesthat they wanna be showing up
for when people are searchingfor them.
If use a very simple example,like us, it would be marketing
(09:27):
in healthcare, marketing andpharma.
we actually do come up a lotunder a lot of those types of
things.
However, a lot of, a lot of themost obvious phrases to your
clients are, are, I wouldassume, Just like years ago.
They're, they're not therealistic approach to to, to
getting traffic to their siteand reaching their audiences
(09:49):
because they're gonna be toocompetitive or too broad.
I would assume that is probablystill the case with you and your
team oftentimes, correct?
Yeah.
The, the, we have clients comein and they wanna rank for a
very popular term, and we haveto look at what's being served
to.
(10:09):
People searching for that is it,has Google identified similar
content that is aligns with theclient, the client's product or
service?
a lot of times the intent isn'tthere.
You know, we're dealing a lot inthe, the B2B space as opposed to
the B2C space.
(10:30):
And say you're talking about acondition, Say, asthma, and
you're developing a, a productto serve people that have
asthma, but yet developing thatproduct is different than the
commercialized side of it whereyou're targeting the people with
asthma.
You're, building your product.
(10:53):
Or your service around buildingthat product to a sponsor or to
a, you know, the, the originaldeveloper and maybe your service
is the, the management ofclinical trials, or your service
is the manufacturing of thatproduct.
So the client isn't directlytargeting asthma or asthma
(11:13):
symptoms.
They're targeting asthma,develop asthma therapy, dev
development, and that that's amuch smaller audience.
But that's your audience.
That's the right audience.
So I always like to tell people,you know, more isn't better when
it comes to traffic, when it,just because there's a, a lot of
search volume around a termdoesn't mean it's the right term
(11:34):
for you.
And in a lot of cases it, it, itisn't, the definitely isn't the
place to start because that'snot where your, your clients are
looking.
That's not where your potentialclients are looking.
They're looking for somebody todevelop a therapeutic for
asthma.
As opposed to a therapeutic forasthma.
And there's a, a vast differencein the search results there as
well as, the, the competition.
(11:56):
It could be that there are ahundred people a month looking
for your service and you'replaying in a, a, you're trying
to play in a.
A pool of a thousand hundredthousand, people searching that
is maybe more of a b2c, aconsumer-based, search.
So if we can narrow that downand say that we're not gonna
(12:17):
bring you a hundred thousandusers to this site cuz you don't
need that.
Your audience is a hundredpeople for this, let's target
that.
And we measured the, the valueof that based on the
conversions.
So we, we have metrics set up onthe website.
To to measure.
They landed on this page, theywent to this page, which is how
(12:38):
we directed them to, and thenthey filled out a form or they
clicked a link to call.
And if I can, if we can deliverthe right conversions to you, it
really doesn't matter how manyusers you get on your site, as
long as it's the right users.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And I, I would assume in a lotof cases, You know, marketers
(13:02):
are looking at certain vanitymetrics that are going to
possibly sound most impressiveto their c e o or, or c f O.
I remember one of the, one ofthe first books I ever read on,
on advertising was Ogilvy onAdvertising, and David Ogilvy
said in, in that book that, Thatanybody who, this was back in
(13:26):
the day where print was, was athing and, and, digital wasn't
even here.
But, that anybody who takes outa full page ad in a magazine or
a newspaper is not, is notconcerned with their roi.
They're concerned with thevanity of saying, we got the
full page ad.
and I would assume that when itcomes to all digital marketing,
(13:47):
including seo, that.
Some of the metrics that peopleare concerned with and maybe
holding you and your team tosometimes are.
More, ones that are gonna soundgood and look really good to
their bosses as opposed to theones like you're saying, that
might really mean effectivenesslike conversions and the right
traffic, which might be at alower volume.
(14:09):
yeah, and I, I mean, Iunderstand brand awareness, I'm,
and, and thought leadership.
it's not really where we spend alot of time on the SEO side, but
there is value there that wecan, we can glean from,
sometimes slightly realigningcontent to.
Match a, an audience keyword ofsome kind.
I, I think there's, there's alot of traditional marketers out
(14:30):
there that still go after thebillboard at the busiest
intersection.
And, you know, if you thinkback, and I'm been around long
enough to, to understand thatmentality, we weren't able to
measure a lot of the marketingthat was done 20 years ago.
Even for that matter, 10 yearsago, we didn't have the, the
(14:52):
measurement, of, of the wholemarketing funnel at that point.
So, you know, you spend the mostmoney to buy the busiest
billboard.
You get the most cars driving byhoping that your target audience
is part of that, part of that,that audience going by Now, we
can laser focus content.
(15:12):
At a specific audience based onwhat they're looking for and
what their intent is.
If it's informational, then the,the marketing funnel is gonna be
longer, but it's still a funnel.
We can still guide that throughusing, you know, UX in the
bringing UX into the mix that,Hey, we're getting you an
audience.
Let's see if we can capitalizeon that and improve the, the
(15:35):
conversion rate by say 2%.
We can, if we improve aconversion rate even by 2% at
the level of, of clientele thatwe're, we're speaking to, 2%
might be five more deals withina, a set period of time.
And we're not talking about, youknow,$50 pair of tennis shoes.
(15:55):
We're talking about a hundredthousand dollars opportunities
that, that are being brought tothem that.
May be, you know, lost in themix normally, or, or, or lost
completely cuz we don't havecontent targeted towards that.
So it, it's a matter of lookingat the, the entire revenue cycle
and what that, what that leadmeans to you.
(16:17):
And on the paid media side,that's always something very
much in focus because you buy anad, you get a set amount of
clicks for the amount of moneythat you purchased.
We need to get a, we need to geta definite ROI on that
immediately, or at least havethe metrics behind why, what the
roi, or, you know, what the,what the conversion rate was.
(16:39):
But with seo, we can look atthat on a longer scale and say,
okay, this article is in frontof this audience.
And this audience we havedetermined is, you know, has the
right intent.
They're looking for a service,they're looking for help.
we know that there's only maybe.
You know, 50 people a, a monthlooking for that.
But we know that our conversionrate is 10%.
(17:01):
So once that article's there andis ranking, that becomes a, a, a
reoccurring revenue source atthat point.
That you could be off makingother pieces of content to be
targeting other audiences thathopefully also get a couple
percent conversion and itdoesn't take a whole lot of
maintenance to, to keep all ofthat content going.
So it's the more content you'reable to generate.
(17:24):
That's, you know, thoughtfullycurated through, keyword
targeting and audienceevaluation.
The more you're able to do that,the more, your net expands and
allows more relevant users tocome in and become, become
customers.
Now, the, you know, the exampleyou used where it's about.
(17:45):
Sales and conversions, it couldultimately lead to a hundred
thousand dollars or, or reallymillions of dollars in, in
contract.
If you're talking, you know, bigCROs and potentially managing
clinical trials For pharma, theb2b, price tag can be pretty
high.
But let's talk about other KPIsand, and you know, tell me what
else you guys look at.
(18:06):
Because for instance, like,again, that's pretty, pretty
easy when it comes to a b2b, Idon't mean easy to achieve and
not always easy to see cuz wedon't always have insight into.
the complete sales loop in, inour client's CRM and marketing
automation systems and all that.
But, but in terms of what you'retrying to achieve, it's
(18:26):
ultimately, it's a conversionthat will ultimately lead to sa
lead to sales.
However, talking about a biotechwhere it's their pre-commercial
and some of their objectives arejust to, improve investor
sentiment and investor awarenessor.
Possibly recruiting for, topscientific talent.
so the objectives for theseother companies are not always
(18:48):
about a conversion that willlead to a sale in those cases,
what are some of the other KPIsthat you guys will still look at
and that you consider importantother than just a conversion?
Sure.
so in the past we were a littlebit limited with our scope that
we were able to look at.
So there was, a metric thateverybody kind of hung their hat
(19:09):
on, which was called bouncerate, which means somebody
showed up on your website andthen they left immediately
without, without doing anything.
And that was basically, did thedoor open?
Did they stay?
If not, then you, you know, itmarked against the bounce rate.
What we're seeing is that thatis going, that is.
Pretty much been sunsetted as ofJuly 1st.
That will be sunsetted.
(19:31):
But what we're switching to isactually much, much more
engaging because it's around theengagement of people on your
site.
So it's not enough to just get'em, to get'em there and get'em
to stay.
It's get'em there and get'em todo something else.
And you only do that bytargeting the correct audience.
you know, from the SEO side, wegotta make sure that we're
bringing the right people inbecause if you show up.
(19:54):
On a website, and it doesn'tspeak to what your needs are or
what you're, what you're lookingfor, you're not gonna engage
with it.
So, engagement on a website isanything from scrolling through
the site, staying on that pagelong, you know, longer than a
couple seconds, to clickinglinks, to downloading resources,
(20:14):
to watching videos, listening topodcasts, you know, staying on
that page and engaging with it.
Send signals back to thealgorithm that this user showed
up.
They found what they wanted andthey spent time looking into it.
So taking a website visitor, awebpage visitor from 10 to 20
seconds to.
(20:35):
A minute, minute and a half canhave a real, a, a really a major
impact on your, on yourwebsite's performance.
And that comes from curating theright content that is engaging
multimedia, because everybodyabsorbs content in different
ways.
So having multiple ways of, ofwebsite use and tailoring that,
looking at the metrics of thatengagement of an audience, and
(20:59):
then tailoring more contenttowards that.
So if you understand thatyou're.
Your users really like watchingvideos, then you need to do more
video.
If, if they spend a lot of timelooking at a chart or a graphic
that is informative, then youneed more charts and graphics.
(21:19):
It, it, it just applies kind ofacross the board at that point.
What a lot of people miss themark on is that they'll have
multiple type, multiple segmentsthat they're targeting and
they'll try to apply thoseelements to.
Universally across the site and,you know, say, say, you know, on
the clinical site, say you'vegot somebody that you know
(21:40):
needs, needs a surgery, a, a, aroutine surgery, that's not
gonna take as much engagement assomebody that's researching a
major condition that islife-threatening or, they're
looking for a second opinion.
So they're gonna engage withthat longer.
So you have to tailor thatcontent correctly based on what
you see in that, that segment.
for what, what is engagingpeople?
(22:02):
if I just need to, need to finda second opinion for a
condition.
I don't need a whole lot ofcontent.
I just need to see that you havea second opinion option.
On the, on the other side of it,certain services that you offer,
say in a biotech situation, someof those are well defined and
people know what they are.
They just wanna see yourexpertise at it.
So maybe more case studies,maybe more examples of your
(22:25):
work.
statistics around the work thatyou've done, whereas somebody
that is more informative or it'smore a technical situation, they
may take a longer view of thatand, and need more information
in order for them to beconvinced to, to move to the
next level or to contact you Andto simplify, I mean, it sounds
(22:45):
like basically it's, you know,when it's not all about a
conversion and a sale, it'sdriving people to content that,
you know, you know, based onunderstanding those personas,
their journeys, those audience'sobjectives, driving them to
content that, you know, appealto them, and then measuring your
success based on how muchengagement you had with that
(23:06):
intended content.
right, exactly.
I think from the outside, I'msorry, I'm sorry.
You, you mentioned investorsand, you know, building content
for investors.
You, you have to, to look andsee what they're engaging with,
what's making them want to takethat next step or learn more
about your organization in orderto, you know, make the
investment.
And, and sometimes that's notthe, the nuts and bolts.
(23:28):
Sometimes that's the culture ofthe, the organization.
Sometimes that's the accoladesthat the, the organization has,
has received, statistics behindthe work that's been done and.
And the, the revenue cycle, youknow, that's, that's obviously a
big part of investing is makingsure the company makes money.
so there's, there's all of theseelements and while most of your
content on your site may befocused towards the technical
(23:50):
side, that takes a a completelydifferent type of content.
Potentially than what you're,what you've rolled out for the,
the, the consumer.
you know, your potentialcustomers are much different
audience than what your investoris.
So, you know, basically we goback to identifying the right
audience for the right contentor vice versa.
Yeah, and I think, you know, wepreach it a lot, which is every
(24:11):
company needs to take a stepback before any marketing tactic
and develop their personas,those personas.
Distinct journeys, which are alldifferent from one another.
You know, you're talking, you'retalking investors, patients,
HCPs, B2B buyers.
Again, when we're talking aboutthose B2B companies, employment
(24:34):
candidates, I mean the, theaudiences are endless.
And, and for any marketingactivity, just take a step back,
whether you do itprofessionally, Or you do it in
a couple hours in your ownconference room or on a Zoom
meeting on the back of a napkin.
Take the time to find youraudiences and their journeys,
and that will help you determinethe content that they need,
(24:55):
which is instrumental to anymarketing strategy, whether
it's.
Content marketing, seo, paidsocial, your website, and so
forth.
And then the whole, from anoutsider again, who's not an, an
SEO o person like you and, andyour team.
You know, I'm just seeing theimportance of data analytics.
Coming more and more into playand how much more complex that
(25:18):
is for you.
More because you simply havemore, more data to look at and,
and more KPIs to, to define andmeasure.
whereas, you know, again, goingback.
A decade or two, it was, well,where am I ranked under this
phrase?
and you know, how much trafficam I getting under that phrase?
Which is, you know, it's still,I know that's still a K P I, but
(25:41):
there's so much more to it.
And now with AI coming into playand.
And, and ways to do, dataanalytics at a whole other
level.
you know, that in itself is, isa, is a podcast topic that, that
we'll have to get to.
So, you know, moving on, I'dlike to like, use a, use a real
life example and, and not a realexample in that.
(26:03):
I don't want you to re revealanything about any specific
clients, obviously, but, wereference CROs as, as, as a
general example here becausewe've always, we've always done
a lot of work with CROs, andsorry for anybody who's sick of
all the acronyms, but that's acontract.
Research organizations.
These are the companies thatmanage clinical trials and all
(26:23):
of the data, for biopharmacompanies that are developing a
drug.
And, and so we've, we've alwaysworked with a lot of CROs, so
Brent, if you.
Let's just use an example like acro, r o.
again, this is B2B and so, sopretend a new c r o was coming
in for an SEO engagement today,and they had usually, you know,
(26:44):
a CRO is gonna have a number ofdifferent services and solutions
that, that they're selling.
But they want to grow thisparticular service line.
And they've given you that, thatset of phrases, they've told you
a little bit about thoseparticular audiences.
Walk me through that real worldscenario in, in working with you
or one of your team members interms of.
(27:07):
You know, how you would go aboutformulating a strategy and, and
targeting their appropriateaudiences in, you know, one of
the things that, that we wannatalk about here is in
unconventional ways, ways thatthey might not be coming into
it.
Thinking of, and giving themdifferent perspectives, other
than just again, the obvious wewant to show up under this
(27:30):
phrase.
So just walk me through thatconversation.
Well, you know this, this is avery common situation where, you
know, we need to apply industryor what the industry's doing,
where the audience is.
If your audience is calling aspecific service by a name, it's
(27:59):
fine to add branding to thatname or, or, Put your own spin
on it, but you still have totalk about what the audience is
talking about.
the, the, the algorithm servessearch results mechanically, you
know, it measures the, the, therelevancy of content,
(28:20):
mechanically.
So it's, it's basically does,does this string of characters
that equals this term.
Appear on the content thatwe're, we're evaluating here,
and if you don't call it whatyour audience is calling it,
it's not gonna show up.
And it, it seems like an obviousstatement, but the, the, the
(28:41):
spin that is put on to enticethe audience on page.
It doesn't always equate to thecontent that, or to, to the
content that the, the algorithmsare looking for.
So, you know, it, it's a kind ofa, a, a joke in our realm is,
(29:01):
you know, if you wanna rank forit, you gotta talk about it.
And that sounds, again, thatsounds very simplistic, but that
is something we run into a lot.
The other thing that a lot ofpeople don't want to talk about
are the basics of their industryto build that authority around.
The, around the topics thatthey're really pushing, you
know, the services that they'rereally pushing.
(29:22):
So you don't, it, it seems likepeople wanna stay away from the
basics of the industry andalways be the cut on the cutting
edge of thought leadership andinnovation.
When that's fine.
Like I said earlier, you know,we, we support that by all, by
all means.
cuz that has a lot of marketingvalue.
But I always put myself insomebody that just got the job
(29:43):
wherever it is.
you know, a as the potentialclient, and I don't fully
understand the industry, I'mlooking for those basic terms
and definitions.
And, and the idea is, is that ifyou're the one that provides
that in a, in a way that helpsthem do their job or understand
their job better, that buildstrust and and authority with
(30:05):
that person.
And.
They're gonna be the ones thatre you know, you're gonna be the
one that they remember when theyneed a provider for that.
and the algorithm's kind of thesame way that you can't just
throw a, a piece of content outthere that is not connected to
anything else on your websitethat demonstrates authority and
expect a rank for it withouthaving supporting content around
(30:28):
all of the other things that,that, make up that, that term.
So, You know, aspects of it,treatments, therapeutics,
experience, all that stuff hasto be well orchestrated on the
site and architected in order tolead to that, that main sales
pitch of this is what we do, wedo it very well, we've got a lot
(30:50):
of experience and we really wantto help you.
That's fine to have that, butyou gotta have all the
supporting content that, thatexpands the, the footprint in
order to bring those people infrom the fringes that, that
aren't directly looking for yourbrand and your service.
And, and you know, when you talkabout back to the beginning when
we talked about misconceptions,that's one of the biggest
(31:11):
misconceptions is that I wantthis page to rank.
Not only rank for search terms,but I also want it to be the
sales page.
And that those two don't alwayswork together.
You gotta lead people throughthe journey.
Yeah.
And these, you know, this partof the conversation again, is
where I've always justappreciated the value that you
(31:32):
bring, because again, I know abig part of the value that any
seo.
Firm or an SEO person is gonnabring to a company is, is a lot
of the technical knowledge.
Again, a lot of the tactics thatare going on, but.
But you really, you, you needthe right strategy and approach
(31:54):
to your audiences in, inthinking about the ways that
you're gonna reach them, asidefrom, you know, how you're
optimizing a title tag and, and,and what technical things you're
doing under the hood.
Again, it's, it's it all, it'sall about the audiences, and,
and how you're gonna reach them.
So, I wanna shift gears a littlebit and thank you for all of
that.
(32:14):
and talk a little bit about, Imean, the thing that, that
everybody's talking about, whichis ai, and how, I mean, first of
all, we as an agency are, areleveraging AI across all of our
competencies at the moment.
And I'm not gonna claim we havethat fully fleshed out.
We're, we're all figuring out,like everybody is, and it's
(32:36):
moving rapidly.
but that's across buildingwebsites.
It's branding, it's content,it's seo, it's paid, it's
social.
so.
We're leveraging AI across allof our competencies.
But I want to, this is an SEOepisode here today, and I want
to hear from you a little bitabout your thoughts, what you've
seen so far, maybe questionsyou've had from clients and how
(33:00):
your team is, you know, startingto leverage some of that
technology.
And, and, and even one specificquestion, because we've been
chatting with a few, A fewmarketers out there about it and
people are even wondering, notjust what does this mean?
How can AI benefit what SEOmeans today?
(33:21):
But is AI and chat G P T goingto affect what SEO even means?
In other words, someone askedus, do I need to be found under
chat G P t?
Like, is that another?
And I know it's integrated withwith Microsoft search engine.
Bang or edge or whatever they'redoing with their search engines
right now.
So Microsoft's got itintegrated, so it, it does mean
(33:43):
something over there in terms ofwhat search even means.
so, so kind of a multi-prongedquestion.
you know, is it gonna change inyour opinion?
No one, no one has these, theseanswers.
Is it gonna completely changewhat search even means?
And then talk a little bitabout, you know, what you guys
are doing today.
Sure.
So, AI is like the acceleratorfor seo.
(34:09):
there's a lot of behind thescenes work that we do that AI
is, is cutting a lot of cornersfor and will continue to en
enhance that.
But the, the biggest impactwe're seeing is that there's
just a flood of content becausecontent's so easy to generate
now.
there's always been hacks and,and methods to mass generate
(34:30):
content.
But it wasn't as intelligent asit is now.
So we're seeing this flood ofcontent hitting the internet
that doesn't necessarily haveany authority, doesn't have the,
background to, to, to build itup over time.
It's just being dumped out thereand, you know, all the search
(34:52):
engines are combing through it,even though they're, they're all
engaged in ai.
They're having to comb throughthat, cuz again, they still want
to deliver the best possibleoption.
Google has done a complete 180on AI over the last year,
whereas they.
They said that, you know, wereally don't want AI content to
be in our search results to, wedon't care who wrote it or what
(35:15):
wrote it.
We want the best possiblecontent.
And if that's being generated byAI or if that's being generated
by, lab physician, that.
That is, is signing off oncontent or writing it?
We, we don't care as long asit's what our users want.
You know, that's, that's the,the metric there.
(35:35):
Is it engaging with, for ourusers?
Is it delivering them theinformation they're wanting?
So what we're doing is we'reusing AI to, to look at those
signals.
On a website and make sure thatthey're there, make sure that,
that your content not only isbetter than the other content
that's out there, but has those,those signals that, that verify
(35:59):
that that.
Yeah, somebody that, that knowswhat they're doing, somebody in
a position of experience andeducation has reviewed this.
you're a real organization asopposed to just a pop-up website
meant to, get search results,and, and, and add those
validating factors to the site.
some of those are behind thescenes.
Some of'em are, are onsite and,luckily there's mechanisms in
(36:22):
place for that.
Structured data is a big part ofthat.
Not only are we leveraging.
AI to create structured datawith, with the elements, all of
the elements we need, without a,without as much testing as we've
had to do in the past.
But we're using that to, tobolster those signals that to,
to the search engines andultimately the ai, that this is
(36:45):
the best possible source for youto include in your.
Your results, whether those aresearch results or, or, you know,
via a chat.
And, you know, luckily that'ssomething we've been focused on
for a long time is, is makingsure those validation signals
are there and are, you know,properly formatted and, and
understandable.
(37:05):
But by doing that, we've kind ofput everybody ahead of the curve
that we, you know, that we'reworking with on these things
because.
When the AI starts looking forbetter sources, I mean, this,
it's, it's, it's just a moreadvanced algorithm that is
looking to deliver the bestanswer possible and the most,
most trustworthy optionpossible.
(37:26):
Our clients will be there.
You know, they've got thosesignals, they're already set up
with the structured data, atleast the basics to, to build on
and, and, and improve their,their position as being the one
that, that provides theresources to the AI for, you
know, anything and anything intheir industry and become that
(37:46):
authority that the AI comes backto, to look for updates and, and
new information.
So, That's really kind of at thefocus at the center of our
focus.
Plus we're also finding that,you know, content, with AI and a
human eye is a very powerfulthing.
So, you know, you can, you canfigure out what elements need to
(38:08):
be in your content much fasterusing ai.
you can build the framework forgood content.
With ai and then bring the humanelement in to add those
verifications, whether it's a, adoctor review or, you know, a, a
marketer's eye to add some, CTAsor called, you know, specific
(38:30):
convertible actions to it.
It, it, it's, it's becomingreally, A super handy tool to Im
make those improvements, muchfaster.
Whereas, you know, before wewere kind of at the mercy of,
of, of the process and itshortcuts the process and allows
us to do a lot more work, a lotbetter work faster.
Mm-hmm.
(38:51):
And again, there's so muchunknown.
One of the, so Brett Cohen, mypartner here at Imagine we're,
we're.
Having, again, a lot ofconversations with people, just
hearing their questions, theirconcerns, sharing with them what
we do know about AI and, and,and one of the things he's
telling people is, don't goinvesting much money in anything
AI right now because, It's gonnachange tomorrow, and then it's
(39:14):
gonna change next week and it'sgonna change next month.
This is so new and nothing aswe've all seen, nothing has ever
moved this fast, ever.
and there's, there's a lot ofthings we, we don't know about
SEO and because one of the, oneof the big questions is, you
know, will chat G P t generatedcontent with human editing
(39:37):
without human editing.
Will it be penalized by Google?
I don't think anyone has thatanswer.
There's, I've seen opinions outthere.
I've seen some people post thatthey saw five or 7% lower
ranking with content generatedby chat G P T versus one
completely written by himself.
(39:58):
But I can speak a couple blogposts we've posted have done
well.
So, I mean, it's, it's there.
I don't think anybody has theanswers.
We're all gonna see.
I also was, you know, without,with the AI wards happening now
already we're seeing how that'sgonna shake out and definitely
Google and Microsoft right atthe top of, of that battle.
(40:20):
you know, there could even belegal repercussions if Google
penalizes, chat GP degeneratedcontent because then we're
getting into an antitrustsituation where, Google's,
penalizing people that are usingMicrosoft's technology because
they're the competitor.
So again, we'll see.
no one knows for sure where allthis stuff is gonna go, but, but
(40:43):
it's certainly fascinating overthe years I've heard SEO's dead
so many times because tech newtechnology came along and the,
the, the deciding factor there.
And, you know, Google has putout a, a document saying,
Basically what I said earlier,that, we don't care as long as
it serves our customers thebest.
(41:03):
And that's really what it boilsdown to.
So if, if a human is looking forsomething and whether it's in
chat G p t or on being or onGoogle, and it's not serving
their needs, it's gonna sendsignals that say, this is not a
good piece of content.
If you go there and it, it'srepetitive and uses, wrong
(41:25):
terminology.
It's not gonna stick, it's notgonna be a engaging piece that,
that people use.
and so the, the audience isultimately gonna be the deciding
factor, right?
Is, is this content useful,helpful?
Can I trust it?
And if so, it's good content.
(41:46):
Does it matter, you know, whowrote it?
It, it literally just has toserve the purpose.
You can't put up a storefrontand not build a store behind it
and expect to make money, andthat's really what it boils down
to.
I, I can write bad content.
I have written bad content.
I don't like to admit that allthe time, but I've written bad
content that didn't work andjust what didn't serve the
(42:08):
answer, or didn't answer thequestion and serve the user like
it was like, like they expected,and it tanked, and that we're
seeing the same thing with ai.
some AI generated content doesvery well.
it does better with, with thehuman element to filter out,
make it readable, make itunderstandable, make it, and,
and by making it readable andunderstandable, you make it
(42:30):
trustworthy.
And by making it trustworthy,you know, people, people stick
to it and, and they use it andthey share it and they, they
link to it and it, that's thewhole cycle that's seo is, is.
Does your content do what theuser needs it to do?
And if it doesn't, then eitheryou, you don't have good content
or you've targeted it to thewrong person, and all those
(42:53):
signals go back and feed thealgorithm.
Whether that's a, a searchengine algorithm, which, you
know, is a, i, I would say atthis point, an elementary
version of ai or serve the AIalgorithm, which is, you know,
far advanced but still is.
Algorithm that that measuresthe, the engagement of, of
(43:13):
content.
Yeah.
I don't wanna say content isking, but without saying it,
I'm, I'm gonna say it becauseit's still at the end of the day
Absolutely.
It's, it's what it's all about.
What do audiences want, whatbrings value to the person using
that search engine, thatwebsite, everything we talked
here about today, it ultimatelycomes down to.
(43:34):
What content brings value to theaudience.
and I think we'll, we'lldefinitely be talking a lot more
about ai.
I think you and I will have,plenty of future episodes on, on
that topic.
But I think, with that, I wannathank you for all your insights
here today.
This was great, and I'm sure youknow, we'll be bringing you on
(43:56):
many more episodes in the futureas well as members of your team.
so thanks Brent and everybodywho joined.
until next time, thanks forjoining.
Thanks Bill
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!