Improved Search Engine Optimization for a Medical Technology Company

Project Summary

Glaukos had a 22% increase in organic search traffic and a 67% increase in form submissions through PINT’s initial round of search engine optimizations over a three-month time period. PINT assessed Glaukos’ search presence, completed keyword research, and created strategic recommendations including technical improvements and content optimizations.

Client Overview

Glaukos is an ophthalmic medical technology and pharmaceutical company focused on novel therapies for the treatment of glaucoma, corneal disorders, and retinal diseases. Glaukos revolutionized the treatment of glaucoma through their Micro-Invasive Glaucoma Surgery (MIGS) procedure and has continued to work towards its goal of improving the lives of people worldwide through new technologies, therapies, and acquisitions.

Client: Glaukos Corporation
Location: San Clemente, Ca.
Industry: Medical Device
PINT Services: Digital Marketing, Content Strategy, Search Engine Marketing, Copywriting,  Front-End Development, User Experience, Quality Assurance
Technology: WordPress, SEO Tools (Google Search Console, Moz, SERPstat)

Challenge

Having optimized content that ranks for target keywords is a priority for Glaukos as it can provide a consistent stream of traffic from its target audience. Glaukos already had a strong search presence but wanted to optimize its site for more keywords, especially non-branded keywords, as its offerings are expanding.

Glaukos had three primary goals for this SEO project:

• Rank higher for target keywords
• Increase organic traffic to glaukos.com
• Increase conversions from organic traffic

Solution

To start the optimization process for Glaukos, PINT completed an audit using industry-leading SEO tools including Moz, SERPstat, and ScreamingFrog. Then, we implemented technical optimizations both sitewide and on specific pages. Finally, we started on content optimizations for targeted keywords.

Many factors determined glaukos.com’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings, including the site’s architecture, the way content is organized on the page, backlinks, metadata, performance, mobile optimization, security (SSL), and search engine algorithms.

Making optimizations in each of these areas helped improve the rankings for Glaukos in the short term, and it’s an ongoing process we are continuing to optimize.

Website SEO Audit

PINT used Moz and SERPstat to run audits of glaukos.com to find technical issues that impacted performance. Each of these tools denoted high, medium, and low priority issues in relation to how much of an impact it has on the site’s overall performance. PINT curated a list of issues to be resolved based on impact and relevance to Glaukos.

Additionally, PINT used ScreamingFrog to pull the metadata for the website, find redirects, and identify any 400 or 500 errors that may have been missed from the other audits.

Technical Implementations

To start, PINT addressed high and medium priority issues such as pages that had 404 errors and 301/302 redirects. PINT also addressed the incorrect hreflang tags and disavowed spammy websites.

404s

While it is fine to have pages that 404 if the content has been removed, having pages that 404 unintentionally or when the content has been moved is something Glaukos wanted to avoid as it provides a bad user experience. Plus, Google will start to remove pages with a 404 error from its index. If that content exists elsewhere, it’s important to create a redirect so Google will index the new page and serve that page to users in search.

PINT addressed each 404 with the appropriate solution based on glaukos.com’s content.

Redirects

It was important for Glaukos to have clean redirects that linked to the most relevant page on glaukos.com, in order to provide the best user experience. Sending the user through multiple redirects (redirect chain) or linking a redirected URL on your page rather than linking directly to the final content isn’t ideal as it takes longer and requires more resources to get the user to his or her destination.

PINT updated each redirect to remove any redirect chains and updated on-page content on glaukos.com to link to the final URL so the user is not redirected.

hreflang

The hreflang tag is used to tell Google which language the page is in so that it can serve pages to the user in the language in which he or she is searching. Glaukos has 11 multilingual website instances, each catering to a specific region across the globe.

It was important for Glaukos’ rankings that each page had the appropriate hreflang tag in order to provide a better user experience. Users are now more likely to get their preferred language during search rather than needing to change languages/regions once on the page.

PINT updated the hreflang attribute for each language and region across all 11 multilingual website instances, which increased the user experience for hundreds of pages.

Disavow File

A disavow file tells Google to ignore specific domains that link to a website. This was helpful for Glaukos because if there are ever spammy or disreputable domains linking to glaukos.com, the disavow file will tell Google that glaukos.com is not associated with these spam sites. Disavowing helps keep glaukos.com’s good reputation intact.

Glaukos had a few domains linking to glaukos.com that could be harmful to its reputation. As these were not domains that Glaukos is associated with, PINT disavowed them.

Content Optimizations

While the Glaukos website had some metadata, many of the titles and descriptions were not optimized for target keywords. PINT completed keyword research, determined target keywords with Glaukos, wrote keyword inclusive titles and descriptions for key pages, and implemented the updates.

However, this is just the start of content optimization as glaukos.com has more content to be optimized for target keywords and will have new content as the company grows and expands its offerings.

Results

Through the search engine optimization work by PINT, the Glaukos website has achieved the following results:

• Organic traffic has increased by 22%
• Form submissions from organic traffic increased by 67%
• PINT resolved over 260 technical errors
• PINT resolved over 1,000 hreflang errors
• Decreased the spam score from 6% to 1%

Organic Traffic & Conversions

Compared to the same time period the previous year, Organic traffic has surged with a 22% increase in Users and a 19% increase in Sessions.

Form submissions from organic traffic have increased by 67% compared to the previous year. Organic traffic brings in ~60% of the physician-related conversions for glaukos.com.

Technical Optimizations

In total, PINT resolved over 260 technical errors:

• 74 high priority – 15 medium priority – 174 low priority
• Fixed missing metadata, 301 redirects, 404 errors, etc.

PINT resolved over 1,000 hreflang errors which will help users get to the correct language and country from search.

Spam Score

PINT helped decrease the spam score for glaukos.com’s from 6% to 1%.

Overall, the Glaukos website is bringing in more valuable traffic from Organic Search and is in a better position technically so that as content optimizations are made, they are more impactful.

If your website isn’t getting the organic traffic results you want, reach out to set up a discovery call with our SEO experts.