The Overview
The Communication Director at National Cancer Institute (NCI) suspected that the site should be getting more organic traffic than it was and had recently lost traffic.
We did an assessment, conducted staff training, and helped implement in-house SEO resources and processes. The site’s traffic is now up 300%.
The Challenge
NCI did not have an SEO strategy or staff, but it also had 150 subdomains run by different departments and on different CMS systems. Additionally, Google had recently rolled out its symptom panels, which was taking a portion of Cancer.gov’s impressions and clicks. Its content was expertly written, but was not optimized for search and was not ranking for its ideal terms. Additionally, its cancer clinical trials section of its site was not ranking for the vast majority of cancer clinical trial keywords.
The Solution
We provided the following services as a part of our strategy:
- Conducted staff SEO training
- Provided staff checklists
- Helped the staff to define their search KPIs
- Assisted with initial keyword research
- Completed an SEO audit, and
- Conducted SEO competitive audit of the breast cancer topic space
During the initial SEO audit, we recommended that they adjust their dynamic clinical trial results to create optimized landing pages to match the current search volume, which focused on cancer clinical trials by cancer type.
The Results
The site saw a 79% increase in the total number of clinical trial-related keywords.
Testimonial
“Katherine supported our SEO program at the National Cancer Institute. She led capacity building workshops for content owners and the technical teams, conducted market and competitive analyses and mentored me personally. She is very knowledgeable in SEO strategy and has wonderful interpersonal skills. Definitely recommend to anyone looking for an SEO audit of their digital presence!”
— Yael Nussbacher, former SEO Lead Publicis Sapient
