Like most industries, dietary supplement companies are going through a major shift in how they do business.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies that used to rely on trade shows for leads to refocus on digital marketing. Increasing website traffic is more critical than ever before.
We have helped supplement clients boost their traffic by tens of thousands of organic (unpaid) views and increase their customer acquisition rates by almost 15 percent last year.
Along the way, we’ve cobbled together a short list of important steps that will help your brand get a lot more traffic without advertising.
SEO Audit Your Website
Making significant improvements to search engine rankings depends have a good sense of where your strengths and weaknesses are. A thorough SEO audit will show you what to focus on.
Many supplement companies have literally hundreds of products for sale online, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed if you don’t prioritize. Here are a few top items you’ll want to check:
1. Technical SEO Checklist
- Check the “mobile-friendliness” of your website. Nearly half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices now, and Google prioritizes websites that deliver a fast, responsive design. If you’re not sure where your site stands, you can run a test here.
- Check the speed of your website. Get rid of code-bloat and compress your image sizes.
- Eliminate useless pages Google has indexed, and fix any valuable pages it can’t index.
2. On-Page and Off-Page SEO
- Make sure your most important pages target a highly searchable keyword (without a high difficulty score), and include them in your title tag, subheaders, meta description, and on-page content. Use internal and external links to add context and help your visitors achieve their goals.
- Check your backlink profile and seek opportunities to gain relevant and honest backlinks from websites with a high domain authority. Remove any toxic links that might be hurting your site.
- Find keywords your competitors rank for, and go after them!
3. Great Content That Checks Off The Right Boxes
- Produce blog posts, videos, and/or podcast episodes that answers questions practitioners, pharmacists, coaches, and consumers search for.
- Include a long-tail keyword phrase in the beginning of the title, and use it naturally in the copy.
- Write an average of 1,000 words per blog post, and include related keywords in your subheaders.
- Include internal and external links to valuable resources.
- Embed supporting graphics and videos in your blog posts for boosting SEO and reducing bounce rates.
Backlinko offers a great SEO audit checklist that will leave no stone unturned as you look for things that need improvement.
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Don’t Gate Your Website Content.
“Gating” content means requiring users to register or log into your website in order to access the material.
While it might make sense to make visitors fill out a form for certain high-value offers, I see supplement companies that gate literally all of their educational resources. This is a bad a idea for multiple reasons:
1. Search engines cannot index gated content easily.
People will not find your content in SERPs (search engine results pages) if Google cannot index it. Making your content easy for visitors to access and easy for search engines to crawl is essential.
Take that awesome eBook you created and publish it in HTML. You will still get leads by offering people a PDF download in exchange for their contact information, and you will get a lot more eyes on your stuff.
If you are worried about competitors seeing your stuff — don’t be. There is no such thing as secret sauce anymore. The risk today is letting your competitors become a better teacher than your brand is.
2. Not everyone is ready to buy.
If your end goal is to get medical professionals to register an account and buy product, you will get better results by respecting the stage of the buyer’s journey they are in.
If a chiropractor goes to your website to learn about how adrenal functionality is impacted by stress, does that mean they are ready to buy your cortisol supplement? Of course not.
Instead of forcing them to sign up, try offering some in-depth information that answers their questions about ingredients. Take them deeper into your website. You will get far better results by guiding your leads on their journey rather than trying to force them across the finish line too soon.
3. Your brand can stay compliant.
Supplement companies are subject to regulations about structural claims in regards to nutrients, which often makes them nervous about creating content online.
That’s understandable, but I can tell you from experience that you absolutely can offer useful content that helps your buyers while avoiding unnecessary risks.
First, your marketing team must understand the rules and abide by them. That will eliminate most problems up front. Then, you need to set up a process for drafting, review, and approval that all team members will commit to.
When the creation and publishing process runs like clockwork, people get better at spotting disease references where they pop up and reduce the possibility of careless errors.
Related Article: How to Plan a Healthcare Website Design
“That’s five unique pieces of content you can squeeze out of a single webinar, each with its own potential for reaching new audiences and generating leads.”
Repurpose Webinars Into Other Content.
Webinars are popular with supplement companies, and with good reason.
The functional medicine community is packed with practitioners who have amazing insights to share about a variety of health areas, and most of them are eager to share their expertise in a Zoom interview.
Regardless of whether you host the videos on your website or on another platform (I’ll say it again), you need to make sure anyone can access the content without registering an account.
In our research about supplement buyers, we’ve found that consumers often introduce practitioners to new products. By excluding them from your educational materials, you are missing opportunities to spark new conversations about your products in the exam room.
Another benefit of producing webinars is you can repurpose them into other content-types at a minimal cost.
Get your video transcribed into text, publish it on your website, and offer the file as a download to people who want to read it later. You can also convert the video to an audio file for your podcast. You might even go a step further and reduce the main takeaways from the webinar into an eBook or a short guide.
That’s five unique pieces of content you can squeeze out of a single webinar, each with its own potential for reaching new audiences and generating leads.
Blog About Ingredients, Not Products.
Blogging about branded products is a common mistake made by supplement companies. Not because medical professionals aren’t interested in learning about them – they are! – but because they likely are not searching for your products by name.
You might have an excellent formula that helps people manage their homocysteine levels and improve cognitive health, but if you want the post to attract people who aren’t familiar with your brand, you need to take a more strategic approach with your writing.
Focus on ingredients practitioners search for online. Educate them about how these nutrients optimize metabolic pathways and correct hormonal imbalances. You can include a call-to-action graphic that leads people to your products, allowing them to explore on their own.
By taking this approach, you are keeping your content focused on your audience needs, rather than your company’s. That is always the way to go when it comes to content marketing.
Increasing your organic website traffic is not a short-term play by any means, so it’s best to keep your expectations realistic. The best results come from a sustained focus on research, planning, execution, and testing. You will never get every product or page to rank at the top of Google SERPs, but with some dedication and focus, you can significantly increase your organic search traffic.
And every step forward, makes your growth less dependent on in-person events that could be cancelled at any moment.
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