Case on SEO-promotion of the website of a pharmaceutical company

Introductory data

Pharmaceutical Corporation "Yuriya-Pharm" is one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in Ukraine. Among the corporation's products are infusion solutions and accessories for their administration to patients. In 2016, the company began selling a new portable infusion system to simplify chemotherapy.

The main goal of "Yuriya-Pharm" as a seller of new specialized equipment in Ukraine when creating a website was to inform as many interested people as possible about the Ю-ПОРТ port systems to stimulate sales through a dealer network. The website was promoted from scratch, immediately after its development. One additional challenge for SEO promotion was that most doctors and patients did not search for such equipment using its name.

Stages of SEO promotion

01 Site preparation

For the successful promotion of a new website, certain improvements are always necessary. In the case of the website https://u-port.ua/, the following changes were made:

Correct opening of the homepage using the main address;
The main version of the site is in Russian, while the Ukrainian version is secondary, due to the high volume of search queries in Russian;
Correction of redirects from 302 to 301, elimination of pages with 404 errors;
Proper configuration of the main hosting, robots.txt, and a new sitemap.xml, taking into account that the Ukrainian version of the site became the secondary one, not the primary one.

02 Analytics setup

To track the results of the promotion, the following tools were set up:

Google Analytics;
Google Search Console (Webmaster Console);

The website was added to Google My Business. This allows users to find the company through Google Maps.

03 Semantic core compilation

Creating a semantic core is a crucial step that was completed even before the preparatory work. It influenced the website promotion strategy, as the keyword research revealed that there were significantly more queries in Russian than in Ukrainian. It was decided to make Russian the primary language of the website.
By gathering a maximum number of thematic queries, we managed to identify key groups of keywords that made the site more informative for visitors. As a result, we added two new sections and filled them with articles.

To track the dynamics of SEO promotion throughout the project, 48 queries were selected.

04 Internal optimization

After gathering the SEO core, it was necessary to make some changes to the content and structure of the site. During the internal optimization phase:

Changed title, description, and header tags (h1-h3) on nearly all pages to target user keywords;
Reduced the image size to improve loading speed without compromising quality, and added an alt tag with a relevant keyword to each image;
Added “breadcrumbs”;
Configured user-friendly (SEF) URLs for all 66 site pages;

Removed categories from URL addresses;
Enhanced internal linking between pages;
Migrated the site to a secure HTTPS connection for faster loading and increased trust;
Added microdata for proper information display on any device.

05 External SEO-optimization

The primary tool for external SEO optimization was link building, coupled with continuous improvement of the website for users. Before increasing the link mass, an analysis of the link mass of the main competitor websites was conducted. Due to the niche’s specificity in Ukraine, there were relatively few competitors, but it still provided a good starting point for the work.

06 Site and project features

During the early stages of work, the collection of the SEO core allowed for quick adjustments to some initial incorrect hypotheses. As a result:

Made Russian the primary language of the site, while retaining information in both Russian and Ukrainian;
Added two important sections that helped visitors access the resource through informational thematic queries.

The narrow niche and the almost complete absence of queries with the key term “port systems” added certain complexities to the project.

The main keywords for promoting the website were related to the accompanying topics, such as “chemotherapy,” “infusion,” “catheterization,” which were widely represented on many major thematic portals dedicated to oncological diseases. The number of pages on the promoted website of Yuriya-Pharm was small, less than 100. Despite this, good results were achieved, which continue to persist even after the completion of the project due to the cessation of imports of Austrian Ю-ПОРТ port systems to Ukraine.

U-Port project case study