SEO Campaign Builds Pharma Brand Site Traffic 1100% in Less Than 1 year.

1. 1
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing tactic used to gain optimal web presence
across search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. The value of this marketing tactic is to be able
to drive high quality traffic to the exact content they are searching for. In order for this tactic to be
effective, SEO professionals maintain a constant pulse on the website they manage to ensure that
content, technical components, and authority on the subject area are optimized toward what people
are searching for.
Situation and Challenges
The CMI SEO team was brought on to ensure patients and HCPs looking for seizure medication could
find the client’s brand. At that time, the client website functioned as a single splash page, making it
difficult to garner qualified traffic. Full site optimization had not yet begun, so this was the ideal time
(the beginning) to bring in a strategic SEO partner.
Disease states are typically highly competitive spaces where numerous branded and highly
authoritative third party resources appear. The SEO team’s understanding of the environment allowed
for careful selection of a content sitemap. As a newly launched website, it was also of absolute
importance that the website be technically efficient, yet robust in order to show the value and
trustworthiness of the website to search engines during this “probationary period.”
Source: CMI/Compas Media Vitals™
Background
Case
Study
SEO Campaign Builds Pharma
Brand Site Traffic 1100% in Less
Than 1 Year
The client was looking for a SEO partner that
understood and could effectively segment consumer
and HCP searches to drive high quality traffic. To
achieve this, CMI had to assess what was being
searched for, and how to best acquire traffic based
upon keyword opportunities for HCPs and consumers.
Having the opportunity to participate in the
optimization process early on allowed for the CMI SEO
team to make recommendations on what content and
pages would best optimize the HCP website.
More than 75% of
neurologists look
to search engines
for answers at
least once per day.
Strategy

2. 2CMI worked with the client’s creative and IT teams to develop site-wide recommendations for
HCPs and consumers to improve relevance for the disease state the drug treated. First, we
analyzed the areas of content that HCPs would need to know in order to construct pages that
spoke to their needs. We have an abundance of data on HCP behavior, for example, according to
Media Vitals™, our proprietary research tool, more than 75% of neurologists look to search
engines for answers at least once per day. In many cases, this is right before or during
appointments with their patients. For HCPs earlier on in the search process, we made
recommendations for webpages directed at the indication. The goal in this is to capture
searchers that are undecided on the right treatment for their patients, directing them to an
option that has been proven effective on patients like theirs.
Our process for the brand’s consumer website was similar, but with a greater emphasis on
answering the questions of patients who were looking to gather information on the disease
state. For consumers, many are undecided on treatment options or do not know the bevy of
treatment options available. This makes a strong unbranded search presence a much higher
priority. The CMI SEO team considered this a priority as we worked with the creative team
constructing the sitemap. The end result was two webpages designated specifically to unbranded
disease state content that consumers had expressed an interest in through their search behavior.
Over a nine month engagement, beginning in April
2014, organic traffic has risen more than 1100%, led
by content updates, on-page optimization and
technical recommendations aimed at making the
website more visible to search engines.
An effective search engine optimization campaign is
the result of high value content that directs visitors
to the information that best answers their unique
question or interest. For our client, the results of our
campaign have proven effective over a one year
period.
Improvements in keyword rankings and increases in traffic to the site are the initial barometer we use to
measure the effectiveness of an SEO campaign. In the case of this brand, in one year’s time they went
from having 0 keywords ranking in a top 10 position to 27 keywords ranking in a top 10 position. This
includes all of the targeted brand keywords within the top three positions as well as highly relevant
unbranded terms.
Over a 9 month
engagement,
organic traffic has
risen more than
1100%.
Results

3. 3
Michael Ranalli
Supervisor, Search Engine
Marketing
Communications Media, Inc.
Robert Kadar
SVP, Customer Development
CMI/Compas
Contact:
More important than the keyword ranking increases engendered by the efforts of the SEO team
are the incremental visits that have been driven. Organic search traffic to the brands’ website has
increased over 1100% from April 2014 to January 2015 and continues to show promise of
increase.
In addition to the rankings the team has earned, the collective technical experience of the SEO
team has allowed them to work with the brand during a recent transition of the website to a
secured server. Proper implementation of technical changes like this are vital to the brand’s online
presence, as it could otherwise lead to a complete de-indexing of the website by search engines.
The efforts of the CMI SEO team have improved the brand’s web presence in their respective
category and they now regularly receive highly qualified and engaged website visitors that find
their content useful and insightful.