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Seth Humble, PCCA SEO Analyst
Build your website to be fast, easy to navigate and easy to update regularly with information that is relevant for your potential customers. Make sure you are using localized keyword phrases that are important to your potential customers. Use Google’s Lighthouse as a grading scale for your website ( quick guide found here ), and make all those grades as perfect as possible. Watch your search engine results page (SERP) ranking over time. Use Google Analytics to track your organic growth over time . Test small adjustments to the website using A/B testing ( A/B testing explained effectively). Only implement changes that positively affect your SERP and web traffic numbers.
Rinse and repeat.
Why is it so hard to get my pharmacy website to show up first on Google?
Most businesses see Google’s search engine result’s page (SERP) as something built to help their websites be more visible to Google users.
Google’s search engine is not built to help websites. Google’s search engine is built to help people find the answers to their questions.
Search engine optimization (SEO), therefore, can help put your pharmacy’s website in front of the people searching for answers on Google, which increases traffic to your website. SEO involves using keywords and phrases on your website that your potential customers use when they search Google for things that your products or services can help with.
Build your website and your SEO strategy with this in mind: Google rewards websites that provide the most trusted, authoritative answer that is quickly accessed and easy for the user to understand.
Google prioritizes speed and performance over animated, flashy websites. So should you.
You want your website to feel more like a comfortable home for the user, not a carnival ride. Simple, reliable experiences have proven to be the most effective in providing users with what they need. Whenever you’re thinking about adding something to your website, ask yourself three questions:
Many websites throw everything they can think of on their homepages, taking a shotgun approach to content rather than a singular, targeted rifle shot. Think about what your local audience needs to know. What are their medical needs that you can help with? If your pharmacy is in Louisville, Kentucky, then you should be building content that takes into consideration the needs and questions of people living there, rather than trying to attract visitors on a larger scale.
Getting more people on your website is always great, but ultimately, unless you are a national or global chain, you want to focus your website’s content on the needs of your community. That way you will get high-quality traffic on your website that will be more likely to turn into revenue. Ask yourself locale-specific questions, such as, “Do we have large populations of people in our community who are interested in HRT?” or, “Are people in our community interested in veterinary compounding because we are in a more rural area?”
Ask questions like that, ones that are relative to your surrounding area.
Then answer them on your webpages or website blog using local keyword phrases to increase the chance that potential customers will find you online. Local keywords are keywords that contain location-specific phrases that generate results related to the same geographic location, such as your city. These keywords help drive people in your area to your website — because they’re the types of things that they are already looking for. You can find local keyword phrases by working with your web developer or using a tool like SEMRush’s magic keyword finder. ( The tool can be learned in three simple steps. ) SEMRush does have a cost, but it can prove to be invaluable to your long-term success in SEO.
SEO should be a part of building or updating your website. Align your SEO strategy with how Google approaches their search engine. They explain it quickly and simply. Google’s algorithm is the king of search engines, so much so that currently, no other search engine even comes close to being a true competitor. Knowing how Google approaches things should inform how you approach your website development and your overall SEO strategy.
Build your strategy or work with your website developer to create SEO goals that are clearly defined, easily testable and data driven. Your SEO strategy should revolve around concrete data points, not what you think might work or what you feel might work for users. Using the tool Google Analytics, either you or your developer should review data points — such as unique visitors, click-through rate and bounce rate — always assessing how well webpages are performing. Review the data often and make changes based on what the numbers say. Here’s a really great starting point for interpreting Google Analytics to help drive your SEO strategy .
If your pharmacy has a website developer, you should be clear about your expectations and goals for the site. Do you want to drive more people to certain webpages on the site? Are you looking to have a simple user interface? (You should.) Do you want to reach for larger audiences or try to get targeted audiences in your area to take specific actions on your site?
Whatever your website goals are, discuss them with your developer. When you determine your specific goals, your developer can then report back to you how those goals are coming along. They will be able to help you course-correct when you don’t meet certain goals and expand goals when you do.
The key to working with a developer or an SEO specialist is transparency. A good, trustworthy developer is someone you can easily get in touch with; who will listen to your goals; who will help you map out those goals; and who will provide regular, easy-to-follow updates.
SEO and website development can seem overly complicated — like learning an alien language. So when in doubt, always fall back on the fundamentals:
Build a fast, easy-to-use website that provides potential customers with the information they need, not the information you want them to want.
Do some localized keyword research for yourself, or with your developer, and set clear, attainable goals for your website. Define what success looks like through clear data points.
Follow that simple path, be consistent and patient, and you will see results for your pharmacy website.
Seth Humble is a member of PCCA’s Web Development team, serving as their SEO Analyst. He has worked in the realm of search engine optimization for five years.