SEO for life sciences: separating the hype from what works
By Ellie Gadd, Communications and Marketing Associate
AI has changed the conversation around SEO for life sciences. There are new tools, new tactics and endless advice on how to stay visible in search. Here we unpick what’s useful and what’s not.
AI has changed how people search, how content is produced and, in some cases, how companies think about marketing altogether.
But, fundamentally, your website still has one job to do: help the people visiting it.
People come to life sciences websites for different reasons: a scientist might be looking for answers, an investor may be trying to understand a technology quickly, someone in procurement wants confidence that you know what you’re doing. None of them care how many keywords you’ve used or whether your blog was written by AI. They just want information they can trust.
1. Write for the person searching
This advice isn’t new, but it matters now more than ever.
Start with the question someone is actually trying to answer.
Look at your own website. Why are people visiting? They may be trying to understand your technology, learn more about your services or decide whether they trust you enough to get in touch.
Good SEO content helps people do something: understand your technology, decide whether they trust you, or take the next step and get in touch.
It explains difficult things clearly and gives people the information they need to make decisions.
Keywords still have a role. They help search engines understand what a page is about and help people find it in the first place. Most companies naturally use the words their audience is searching for anyway.
The trouble starts when phrases are forced into sentences that nobody would say out loud. The same principle applies to AI search.
If someone can scan your page and quickly find what they need, AI systems are more likely to understand it too. Clear headings, straightforward language and a sensible structure help both people and search engines.
2. AI is a tool, not a strategy
There is nothing inherently wrong with AI-generated content.
AI can help with research, summarising information, organising ideas or getting a first draft onto the page. Plenty of marketers use it in exactly that way.
Problems start when the process becomes the goal and content is produced simply because it’s easy to produce.
You’ve probably seen the results yourself: endless “What is…” articles, pages repeating advice you’ve read a dozen times before, and blogs that sound convincing until you reach the end and realise you haven’t learnt anything.
Life sciences audiences are particularly unforgiving of this. They’re quick to spot content that lacks substance. Generic advice is easy to ignore and buzzwords wear thin very quickly.
Google has been clear on this point too. It cares about the quality and usefulness of content, not how it was produced.
If you’re using AI, the same questions still apply. Is it accurate? Does it say something useful? Would someone learn something they couldn’t have picked up from the first three results on Google?
If the answer is no, think twice before publishing it.
3. Resist the urge to create pages for everything
More pages doesn’t automatically mean more traffic.
Websites can contain hundreds of pages that attract very little attention, while smaller sites can perform remarkably well. The difference is usually the usefulness of the content.
We often see with our clients that, over time, their website has become more complicated.
New blogs are added, service pages are expanded, resources build year after year. Individually, none of those things are a problem, but collectively they can make a website harder to navigate and leave visitors unsure where to start.
A smaller number of well-written, genuinely useful pages is usually far more effective.
Before publishing something new, ask yourself:
- Does this answer a real question?
- Do we have something useful to say?
- Is this better than what’s already on our site?
- Would we still publish it if search engines didn’t exist?
It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer honestly.
4. Keep your website technically healthy
Technical SEO doesn’t need to be complicated, but the basics matter.
Pages should load quickly, images should be compressed properly, and links should work. Important pages need to be easy to find, and your site should work just as well on a phone as it does on a desktop computer.
For life sciences companies, this is often where older websites start to creak a little. Old campaign pages stay live, PDFs are uploaded without context, and broken links appear and service pages quietly become outdated.
A simple quarterly review is usually enough to keep things under control.
- Fix broken links.
- Review page speed.
- Update old pages.
- Remove content that no longer serves a purpose.
- Make sure your most important pages are easy to reach.
Poor site health can make good content harder to find, so it’s worth keeping on top of.
A page that attracts fewer visitors but reaches the right audience can deliver far more value than one with thousands of visits and little commercial impact.
5. Use internal links properly
Internal links help readers move around your website. They also help search engines understand how your pages connect.
A good internal link answers the next question someone is likely to ask. If a visitor is reading about your lead programme, they may want to understand the science behind it. Someone exploring your pipeline may be interested in your manufacturing capabilities, scientific expertise or the results you’ve published so far.
Internal links should feel natural. If they’re there purely for SEO, readers usually notice.
6. Earn links by being worth linking to
Backlinks still matter.
But buying hundreds of links or publishing guest posts on any website that will take them was never a particularly good idea, and it’s an even worse one now.
The life sciences sector is relatively small. People know which publications matter, which conferences are influential and which organisations are respected.
That’s where you want to appear.
If someone offers fifty backlinks for a few hundred pounds, or asks you to pay to publish an article on a website you’ve never heard of, save your money.
Most of the worthwhile links we’ve seen have come from ordinary things done well: a useful article, an interesting conference talk, a piece of research people wanted to share, or a company explaining something complicated in a way that finally made sense.
7. Make content easy to trust
Trust matters in every sector. In life sciences, it matters even more.
People want to know who is behind the content they’re reading and why they should believe them. That might mean naming the author, showing scientific or commercial experience, linking to relevant services, or explaining how claims have been checked.
This is also where proofreading and review matter. Small errors can damage confidence, especially when the topic is technical.
Before publishing, check:
- terminology
- units
- product or service names
- links
- claims
- dates
- formatting
- consistency across pages
People don’t expect perfection but they do expect care and attention to detail.
8. Measure what matters
Traffic is useful, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
For a life sciences company, a smaller number of relevant visitors may be more valuable than a large number of casual readers. Rankings and page views only tell part of the story. Increasingly, people are getting the information they need directly from search results and AI summaries without clicking through to a website. That doesn’t mean your content has failed. Being visible at the point people are searching still helps build awareness and credibility.
Look at which pages bring in enquiries. See which topics keep people on the site. Pay attention to the content that gets shared and discussed. Review older pages occasionally and decide whether they still deserve a place on the website.
SEO should support commercial goals. A page that attracts fewer visitors but generates enquiries, strengthens your reputation or reaches the right audience can deliver far more value than one with thousands of visits and little commercial impact.
Why an independent website review is worth it
The reality is that most companies are too close to their own websites to see the problems.
You’ve probably read every page dozens of times and know exactly what you mean. That familiarity makes it surprisingly difficult to spot gaps, confusing messages or technical issues that may be holding the site back.
An independent review often highlights things that have been hiding in plain sight.
A good website review goes beyond traditional SEO. It should consider technical SEO, on-page optimisation, how well your content performs in AI-powered search, the quality of your messaging, user experience and how effectively your website supports your commercial goals.
Sometimes the biggest improvements start with someone asking the questions you no longer think to ask.