Late last year a group of us started questioning which of the companies in our industry, healthcare & pharmaceutical, had the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results. People started throwing ideas around concerning how one would actually measure the ranking, what companies to look at and how to differentiate brands sold by the same company. We put it all together and ran the numbers…and what we saw was fascinating. We then decided we would begin to release these rankings on a quarterly basis, starting today!Why do this you ask? 80% of Internet users have accessed the Web in search of health care information (Pew Internet & American Life poll) and 64% of Internet users go to a search engine before other online destinations when researching products or services (Jupiter). It is critical that pharmaceutical companies take the necessary steps to ensure that health information seekers find their brands online.
Rather than belabor the point, let’s get to the rankings. You will find the methodology at the very end of this posting, and I’m looking to hear from people on what they think the numbers say, suggestions for next quarter, and more!
Methodology:
- Data compiled between January 1 and March 31, 2007
- Examined top 5 brands from top pharmaceutical companies based on 2006 revenue sales reported by company financial statements
- Searched 4 keyphrases for each brand:”[indication]” and “[indication] treatment” and “[indication] medication” and “[indication] symptoms”
- Recorded brand’s website rankings and scored by defined Index (below)
Index:
Index = (search ranking value*search market share)/11
Index Scoring System
Top 5 Rankings = 15
First Page Ranking = 10
Second Page Ranking = 3
Third Page Ranking = 1
Not Listed on First Three Pages = 0
[Update: It has come to our attention that there may be a little confusion regarding our Pharma SEO Analysis, and we’d like to address it here. Catalyst (that’s us) is a Healthcare Search Marketing agency with Pharmaceutical clients. You can find more about What We Do and who Our Clients are by reviewing our website. Using the simple methodology above, which was gleaned from publicly available financial information, anyone could arrive at these same results. Please continue to provide us with your comments and feedback. We’ll always respond to your questions, concerns and inquiries. ]
2 Comments
Hi Heather…thanks for this cool study. Can you please clarify two things for me?
1. What is the value you assigned to the “search market share” factor in the index equation?
2. Did you use any unbranded sites, such as bpsuccesszone.com, for rankings analysis?
Additionally, if you would care to share the root keywords you used for each brand - even by email - I would really appreciate it, so that I could attempt to duplicate the results of your study? I am specifically looking for those you used for just a few of the other brands in the study. Again, please feel free to contact me by email and I could give you those?
Thanks!
Chris
Hi Chris, thanks for reading the blog, great to hear from someone helping to serve the SEM space.
As I’m sure you read, our methodology for this study was straight forward and can be found above; I believe this answers your first and second question?? I would welcome a conversation on keywords and what you are looking to do in terms of a survey of the market, we would love to see you run the method on unbranded sites, that would be very interesting.
I’ll shoot you a quick note over email so you have my contact info and we can catch up.
-Heather.
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