DALLAS, TX (June 21, 2023)
A conversation with Lauren Whitehead our Senior Director of Client Strategy
In the evolving world of digital marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are transforming how we think about search engine optimization (SEO) and approach marketing strategy. To gain more insight into how life science marketing professionals are tackling the challenge of adopting AI in SEO, we sat down with Lauren Whitehead, the Senior Director of Client Strategy at Supreme.
How do you think AI has transformed the approach to SEO?
Lauren: We've seen a lot of changes in the past few years in how the main search engines like Google and Bing rank content. For example, Google’s AI-powered algorithm,
Google Rank brain, is continually enhancing the relevancy of organic results.
We’re seeing a shift from the old algorithms that relied solely on exact keyword phrase matching and trust signals like backlinking to more advanced algorithms that consider semantic search and user behavior signals. This shift is all about surfacing better quality content that matches the user search intent.
As companies like Microsoft and Google keep investing in AI, the evolution of search will continue. Announced on May 14th,
Google will be rolling out AI overviews as part of the new search-generative experience powered by a new Gemini model.
For the life science industry, this transformation is quite significant and the full impact on organic traffic is unknown. Even though life science search terms tend to be more technical, the improved algorithms are getting better at understanding the specific search intents of life science audiences. For instance, if someone’s looking up “What are CD4 T cells?”, Google’s now returning better, more informative results. The same goes for more product-specific queries, where Google is continually delivering more relevant product results.
What are the key benefits of integrating AI into your life science SEO strategy?
Lauren: I think the biggest impact and benefit for life science marketing professionals is the use of Generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT. One area in which we have seen the most benefit is accelerating content creation. These tools can help identify topics, find content gaps, narrow down on underperforming content and help to create publishing schedules. It's all becoming faster and more efficient.
In the life science sector, the attitude towards AI-generated content is slowly changing. For instance, top publishing journals like Nature and Science have adapted their
guidelines to acknowledge the role of AI in the manuscript creation process.
Another key advantage of AI is the ability to analyze large data sets without coding skills. Previously, you might have needed a data scientist to help interpret data and identify trends. Now with AI tools, we can handle larger datasets, spot trends, find gaps, and tweak marketing strategies proactively.
Have you seen examples in the life sciences industry where companies use AI without adequate scientific oversight, potentially leading to inaccurate or misleading content? What are your thoughts on this issue?
Lauren: Hallucinations and incorrect or misleading AI-generated content are common concerns. From our experience, any AI-generated content still requires editing from a scientific human writer. Human oversight is crucial to ensure the content is accurate, unique and will resonate with the target audience.
Life science and pharma companies are particularly concerned about data protection when it comes to the adoption of AI tools. In a recent ZoomRx survey of more than 200 life sciences professionals, more than half said their companies have banned employees from using ChatGPT, including 65% of the top 20 Big Pharmas. Despite this, more than half of those surveyed said they use ChatGPT at least a few times a month, with over a quarter of respondents using the tool a few times a week.
At Supreme, data protection is one of our top priorities. From the very beginning, we wanted to ensure that any information shared with an AI tool was not being used to train the model and remained confidential.
What other challenges are you seeing in applying AI to SEO?
Lauren: A big challenge right now is the overwhelming number of AI tools available. There’s a new tool popping up almost every day. Additionally, there's a learning curve associated with any new tool, including more intuitive tools like ChatGPT.
It can take considerable time to figure out the right prompts, level of detail and direction to get the desired output.
Can you share examples of AI tools that have been particularly effective for SEO in life sciences?
Lauren: We've already talked about ChatGPT which is probably the most well-known. Additionally, we're seeing various AI assistants being integrated into SEO tools like SEMrush and Surfer SEO. These tools help to scale our SEO and content capabilities. We're also exploring other tools that assist with technical SEO tasks such as mapping redirects, building site maps and more.
How do you see those tools impacting the analysis and the use of big data?
Lauren: We're currently working on leveraging AI to generate actionable insights for our clients from our proprietary life science marketing data set. One part of this is creating a new model to analyze website performance data at scale against industry benchmarks. There are a lot of new exciting things in the pipeline.
Regarding future trends, how do you see the role of AI evolving in life sciences? Will its impact on the industry expand, contract, or grow exponentially?
Lauren: I see AI's role in life sciences expanding. AI will continue to automate and accelerate many processes, but there will still be a need for humans to analyze the output.
AI models still struggle with reasoning and certain decisions will continue to need human expertise. I'm optimistic that as AI models evolve, we will see significant improvements in accuracy and more use cases emerge.
What advice would you give to life sciences companies looking to start leveraging AI for their SEO efforts?
Lauren: The first step is defining what you need AI to do so you can choose the right tool. If you want to use AI for content generation, there are several tools available, from ChatGPT to
Jasper, and even
writing assistants in platforms like SEMrush.
Second, it’s important to understand that you won’t get perfect results with your first attempt. Using generative AI is an ongoing learning process; putting time into prompt engineering and training the model with reference information is crucial to get the best output.
Pro tip: If you’re using ChatGPT, try to use the same chat to build on previous information and tackle complex requests in multiple steps. If you need to create a repeatable process for one specific task, consider creating a custom GPT.
Lastly, looking beyond SEO, what is the future of AI in life science digital marketing over the next five to ten years?
Lauren: It's quite an exciting time. We're moving towards creating better customer experiences and enhancing personalization. This includes understanding how customers interact with websites across every touchpoint. We’ll be able to integrate AI into these experiences, helping us analyze data and extract insights.
As the amount of data increases, AI will be instrumental in developing more effective marketing campaigns, improving website functionality, and aligning technical features with user expectations. The pace at which this integration occurs—whether it happens in the next two years or takes up to ten years—is the biggest unknown.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention about SEO for the Life Sciences that you’d like our readers to know?
Lauren: Yes! We recently finished up a huge update to our
Ultimate Guide to Life Science SEO, including a bonus section on AI. It has a comprehensive, step-by-step checklist of everything you should be taking into consideration when building out your SEO strategy for your company’s website. It’s the same guide we use in-house for our clients. You can visit this resource and
grab your free PDF copy, here.
Download Our Free Life Sciences SEO Checklist
Like this article? Download our Ultimate Life Sciences SEO Checklist as a free PDF here.
Download as PDFAuthor Bio:
Lauren Whitehead is the Senior Director of Client Strategy and has been with Supreme since 2019. She specializes in helping life science companies increase organic traffic and convert more leads. Lauren holds a PhD in immunology and has research experience in autoimmunity and infectious disease. In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her Labrador in the Scottish Highlands and binge-watching science-fiction series.
