Situation
Alcon Laboratories is a global healthcare developer and manufacturer of eyecare products. Patanol is their prescription eye drop for treatment of allergic conjunctivitis. To promote the eye drop treatment, the company developed a website, Patanol.com, in 2001. Shortly thereafter, Patanol marketers discovered that building a robust brand presence, increasing consumer awareness and attracting qualified traffic, is a daunting task for any website, let alone a brand new one. They were looking to increase the number of downloaded rebates from their website as well as dominate the competition on visibility for non-branded keywords.
To achieve their goals, Patanol marketers realized they needed a comprehensive online strategy that incorporated search engine marketing. So they turned to iProspect.
Challenges
At the beginning of the campaign, the Patanol Website was new and therefore had very little visibility within the major search engines. Furthermore, many competitor websites within the prescription eye treatment segment had already established a strong presence within the top search engines. As a result, without a targeted search marketing strategy for their new site, Patanol marketers risked losing potential sales leads to competing websites that had well-established search engine presences in the online health care products marketplace.
Additionally, the Patanol Website had very few listings within the major search directories such as Yahoo!. This not only resulted in low visibility in Yahoo!, the site was also missing the opportunity to enhance its visibility in other major search properties as links within the Yahoo! directory are considered within the ranking algorithms of other search properties such as Google. When the Patanol campaign began, there were just 9 incoming links to the site.
Another challenge for the Patanol Website was that it lacked keyword-rich content on several important pages. Because of this, the site was not taking full advantage of search engine optimization strategies that would improve its ranking performance in search engines. Search engine spiders “feed” on content. The length of copy on each Web page, the number and density of targeted keyword phrases, and the number and format of anchor-text links within the content, are all critical to the way search engines crawl, index and rank Web pages.
Finally, the last challenge for the Patanol Website was adhering to FDA regulations. Every marketer of pharmaceutical products produce marketing materials that adhere with FDA guidelines. To do this, Patanol marketers had to develop carefully constructed content that presented a “fair balance” between information about the product’s effectiveness and its risks. Content also had to be written in a “user-friendly” (non-technical) language. This made it difficult to construct keyword-rich copy and as a result, some pages were not developed for optimal search engine optimization.
Solution
iProspect initially concentrated on researching and analyzing Patanol’s target audience and their search behavior and linguistic patterns. This included consumers, as well as health care providers within the eye care treatment field. After gaining a clear understanding of the client’s business model, competitive landscape, and search environment, iProspect was able to develop a robust universe of relevant, targeted keyword phrases.
iProspect subsequently implemented an aggressive search directory strategy for the Patanol Website, as it was seriously lacking visibility in this area. The directory research process included a thorough analysis of related allergy and eyecare categories, and the development of detailed, keyword-rich titles and page descriptions for each listing that met search directory guidelines as well as FDA policies. The iProspect team then made manual submissions for review by search directory editors.
To overcome the website’s lack of visibility within search engines and to begin the competitive fight, the iProspect team recommended the addition of strategically placed keyword-rich copy for several pages of the Patanol Website and then developed customized meta tags for various pages as well. Then manual submissions were made to the major search engines.
Finally, the iProspect team devised a relevant content endorsement™ strategy to drive additional traffic to the site via links from other relevant websites.
Results
Since campaign launch back in 2001, the number of monthly unique visitors to the Patanol Website has grown by 6,487% and year after year, traffic numbers continue to climb.
The number of monthly search referrals has increased 2,442% since the beginning of the campaign.
The number of keywords generating rankings for the Patanol Website has increased by 27%.
The number of position one rankings has increased 192%.
Patanol has far surpassed its top 7 competitors in terms of overall visibility on non-branded keyword phrases in all top 5 search properties according to market share. Patanol currently outranks its closest competitor by 385%.
