SEO

A user guide for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at BD

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a collection of strategies, techniques, and best practices that can optimize BD websites or web content to improve our visibility and ranking on third-party search engines, such as Google and Bing. SEO is focused on increasing organic (non-paid) traffic to BD websites and should be part of every digital campaign strategy.

Most online experiences begin on a search engine. The world’s leading search engine, Google, processes about 3.5 billion searches daily. As consumers, we use search often to find information on various topics. Over a third of traffic to medical websites comes from organic search. BD customers and prospects will also utilize search engines to become informed and learn about the content, solutions, and products BD offers. It’s part of their journey; therefore, BD’s websites and content must be optimized to rank well when sought in search.

Unlike others, SEO is a marketing channel that relies not on a budget but on implementing best practices. It’s an “always-on” practice that requires continuous monitoring, improvement, and attention. Those optimizations feed into the factors that weigh into search engines’ ranking algorithms and are bucketed under three core pillars.

Keyword Research

Identify keywords to target and analyze trends of what customers search for

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On-Page Optimization

Structure your content with an SEO focus to make it more search-engine-friendly

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Content Marketing

Publish valuable and helpful content which ranks well

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Authority

How to optimize internal links and acquire quality backlinks from other websites and channels to improve SEO

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User Experience (UX)

Creating a positive user experience and removing common barriers, can impact SEO

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Technical SEO

Optimizing websites to make it easier for search engines to access and index our pages

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In today's digital landscape, getting found online is more important than ever. Major commercial search engines like Google and Bing drive most global web traffic. Although social media and other channels are significantly growing in prominence, they are nowhere near as impactful as “search.”

Search is unique because it provides targeted traffic based on what the customers are looking for. Search queries - the words customers type into the search box - carry extraordinary value. On the other hand, if search engines are still looking for our websites or our content, we miss out on incredible opportunities to drive traffic.

Investing in SEO can have an exceptional rate of return compared to other types of marketing and promotion.

Search engines are intelligent, but they still need help. The major engines are constantly working to improve their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return better results to users.

However, there is a limit to how search engines can operate. Adding the right ‘signposts’ to our key content and messaging goes a long way to improving searchability.

Additionally, good content marketing practices impact how search engines treat our content once it has been found. Executing SEO will help boost our organic search rankings so that content will be placed where customers will more readily find it.

While SEO and PPC (Paid Per Click, also known as Paid Search) focus on search engine results, they are different practices with different requirements, strategies, and techniques. Each channel can be implemented separately without the need for the other. But when there’s a focus on both SEO and PPC, it’s typically known as SEM (Search Engine Marketing). See below to understand what makes these channels unique.