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Mesa, Arizona, United States
Mesa, Arizona, United States
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As the SEO Lead at Moderna Therapeutics, I was responsible for bringing the best SEO practices to the forefront of their digital strategy. One of the key initiatives I designed and implemented was the Schema.org structured data strategy, which played a crucial role in improving Moderna’s search visibility across 43 pharmaceutical websites. This case study explores how I led the development and integration of structured data, significantly enhancing the company’s search engine performance and social media engagement.
As the SEO Lead at Moderna Therapeutics, I was responsible for bringing the best SEO practices to the forefront of their digital strategy. One of the key initiatives I designed and implemented was the Schema.org structured data strategy, which played a crucial role in improving Moderna’s search visibility across 43 pharmaceutical websites. This case study explores how I led the development and integration of structured data, significantly enhancing the company’s search engine performance and social media engagement.
Structured data refers to a standard way of organizing and labeling content on a webpage, allowing search engines to better understand and display the information. Schema.org structured data is the recognized industry standard used by search engines like Google and Bing. I also integrated OpenGraph and Twitter Cards to ensure proper representation on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
As the SEO Lead, my goal was to ensure that Moderna’s digital presence was not only optimized but also future-proofed. Structured data was a key element of this strategy because of its ability to:
Increase click-through rates through rich result snippets
Improve search visibility across medical content and drug information
Enable faster indexing, particularly for timely content like COVID-19 updates
Optimize content for voice search, positioning Moderna as a key source of information
By implementing structured data, I ensured that Moderna’s websites gained a significant edge in competitive search spaces, especially as many competitors had not yet adopted this best practice.
Defining Page Purpose and Strategy
Each page required a detailed analysis of its content to determine the appropriate structured data markup. For example, drug information pages were tagged with the Drug schema, while pages with FAQs were enhanced with the FAQPage schema. In many cases, I used multiple sets of structured data on a single page to ensure comprehensive coverage of the content.
Collaborating and Educating Web Developers
With the structured data strategy defined, I collaborated closely with the web development team to ensure correct implementation. I provided documentation, templates, and training sessions to speed up the process. This hands-on approach ensured that every developer understood the value of structured data and how to integrate it seamlessly into the HTML code.
Developing Best Practices and Templates
To maintain consistency and scalability, I designed structured data templates that could be used across the 43 websites. These templates covered a wide range of content types, including medical pages, news articles, FAQs, and video content. I also created best practices documentation to guide page layout, maximizing the SEO benefits of structured data.
Implementing Types and Properties
Schema.org is organized around types (content categories) and properties (elements within those categories). Here’s how I applied them across Moderna’s websites:
Article and NewsArticle for press releases and news updates
MedicalWebPage for content featuring specialized medical information
Organization for company details, including location-specific information
This comprehensive approach ensured that each webpage was optimized for search engine understanding, improving its ranking potential.
Scaling Across Multiple Websites: Managing structured data implementation for 43 different websites required careful planning. Each site had unique content that needed specific types of structured data. I developed scalable processes and guidelines that allowed the team to implement structured data efficiently and consistently.
Training Development Teams: While structured data was essential for SEO, it required close collaboration with the web development team. I made sure to train the developers thoroughly, offering step-by-step instructions on how to add structured data into the HTML code. This education was vital to ensuring long-term success.
Maintaining Consistency: With so many websites and different teams involved, maintaining consistency was a challenge. I introduced templates and a robust documentation process to ensure that all teams followed the same approach, which resulted in uniform structured data implementation across all sites.
Rich Snippets and Enhanced Search Results: Thanks to the structured data implementation, Moderna’s content began to appear in rich snippets, improving both visibility and click-through rates. Whether it was drug information or frequently asked questions, rich snippets allowed Moderna to stand out in search results.
Improved Indexing and Higher Rankings: The structured data allowed search engines to crawl and index pages much faster, leading to better rankings for important content like medical updates and drug information. This was especially valuable for rapidly evolving content, such as COVID-19-related pages, where quick indexing was crucial.
Seamless Social Media Sharing: The integration of OpenGraph and Twitter Cards ensured that Moderna’s content was properly displayed when shared on social media platforms. This resulted in more consistent branding and improved social media traffic.
Voice Search Optimization: Voice search is increasingly important in the medical and pharmaceutical industries. By implementing structured data, I positioned Moderna to succeed in this emerging channel, ensuring that its content was optimized for voice search queries.
Article: https://schema.org/Article
COVID-19 Announcements: https://schema.org/SpecialAnnouncement
Drug: https://schema.org/Drug
FAQPage: https://schema.org/FAQPage
Medical WebPage: https://schema.org/MedicalWebPage
Organization: https://schema.org/Organization
News Article: https://schema.org/NewsArticle
The core issue at Moderna was that most of the content housed in PDFs had variable data that needed regular updates from multiple systems that could not be integrated to web through APIs. This made PDFs cumbersome because each time the data changed, the entire document had to be re-uploaded. Additionally, PDFs did not offer the SEO benefits that web pages provide, such as rich metadata, structured data, or better user engagement.
Key challenges included:
As the SEO leader at News media organization, I identified a critical issue that was hindering our SEO performance: posting news cards to multiple categories. This practice was causing content cannibalization, which severely limited our ability to rank both our categories and articles effectively in search results. I developed and implemented a strategy to address this issue by focusing on single-category placement to fortify topical authority and improve overall rankings.
At News media organization, the existing strategy involved placing articles and news cards in multiple categories to help users find content more easily. While this seemed beneficial for user navigation, it created several SEO challenges:
Ultimately, this strategy prevented our categories from gaining momentum and negatively impacted the ranking potential of our articles.
To resolve these issues, I designed and implemented a strategy that eliminated the practice of posting articles to multiple categories. Instead, we concentrated on building topical authority within each category by ensuring that related content was housed in a singular, focused category. This approach allowed search engines to better understand the content structure and pass ranking signals from the category to the articles.
By ensuring each article was placed in only one category, we eliminated the issue of content cannibalization. This allowed search engines to focus on the relevance of the category and its content, rather than splitting authority between multiple categories.
By concentrating related articles within one category, we strengthened the topical authority of each category. This enabled search engines to recognize these categories as authoritative sources on specific subjects, which in turn helped boost rankings for both the category pages and the articles within them.
A focused category structure allowed us to pass ranking signals from the category to the articles more effectively. As each category built authority in its topic, the articles within it also benefited, improving their ranking speed and visibility in search results.
Contrary to initial concerns about limiting users’ ability to find content, the new approach actually enhanced the user experience. With a well-organized category structure, users were able to navigate to related articles more easily, improving engagement and time spent on the site.
Implementing this change required coordination across multiple teams, including editorial and development. Key steps included:
After implementing this strategy, we saw immediate improvements in our SEO performance:
By focusing articles within a single category, we saw an increase in category rankings. Search engines began recognizing the topical authority of each category, leading to better rankings and increased traffic to the category pages.
As the categories grew in authority, individual articles within those categories began to rank faster. The concentrated ranking signals from the category helped articles climb search rankings more quickly, leading to better visibility.
With improved category and article rankings, At News media organization experienced a surge in organic traffic. Users were now able to find relevant content more easily, which resulted in higher engagement and better site performance.
The new structure also improved the user experience. With clear category assignments and well-organized content, users were more likely to explore related articles within a category, increasing both time on site and user satisfaction.
With a more focused content strategy, we were able to target new keywords and fill existing content gaps. Each category and article was now optimized for a specific set of keywords, which allowed us to rank for a broader range of terms and reduce our content gap.
The focused content structure made our categories and articles more authoritative and link-worthy. This led to an increase in backlinks, further boosting our domain authority and improving our search rankings.
As the SEO leader at News media organization, I identified a significant issue with the site’s URL structure. While we had well-established categories, the articles were not following the appropriate URL path, leading to several SEO problems, including a loss of topical authority, missing focus keywords in URLs, and weakened internal linking. I designed and implemented a URL restructuring strategy to correct this, which resulted in improved topical relevance, better keyword optimization, and enhanced rankings across categories and articles.
At News media organization, we had categories in place, but the articles associated with those categories were not following the correct URL structure. This created several SEO challenges:
The inconsistent structure was not only confusing for search engines but also had a negative impact on the user experience, as users found it harder to navigate between related content.
My Solution: URL Restructuring for Topical Relevance and SEO Optimization
To address this issue, I developed a URL restructuring strategy that aimed to align all articles with their corresponding categories, ensuring that the topical authority of each category was reinforced by the articles beneath it.
The first step involved conducting a thorough audit of the existing URL structure. I identified which articles were not following the correct category path and mapped out the changes needed to align each article with its respective category.
To strengthen the relationship between categories and articles, I implemented a logical URL hierarchy that followed a structured path:
This structure ensured that articles were clearly associated with their categories, passing ranking signals from the category to the article and helping search engines understand the topical relevance of each page.
One of the key aspects of the restructuring was ensuring that each URL contained the main focus keyword of both the article and its parent category. This not only improved keyword optimization but also made the URL more meaningful for both search engines and users. For example:
By incorporating the focus keyword of the category, the new URL structure provided a stronger signal to search engines about the content’s relevance to specific search terms.
To ensure that the restructuring did not result in broken links or a loss of traffic, I implemented 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. This allowed us to maintain any existing SEO value while transitioning to the improved structure, ensuring a smooth experience for users and preserving search engine rankings.
With the new URL structure in place, I focused on improving the internal linking strategy. By creating strong links between related articles within the same category, we further reinforced the topical authority of each category. This helped to pass ranking signals between pages, improving their chances of ranking higher in search results.
The restructuring process produced significant improvements in SEO performance, including better rankings, increased traffic, and a more organized content structure.
By aligning articles with their respective categories, we restored the topical authority of each category. This helped search engines recognize the relevance of the categories and the articles within them, leading to improved rankings for both category pages and individual articles.
The inclusion of focus keywords in the URLs provided a clear signal to search engines about the relevance of each article. This resulted in higher rankings for targeted keywords, as the URL structure now supported the SEO efforts for both categories and articles.
With the new URL structure in place, we saw a noticeable increase in organic traffic. The improved keyword optimization and topical relevance helped the site rank higher for key search terms, driving more users to both the category and article pages.
The new, structured URL paths made it easier for users to navigate the site and find related content. The clear hierarchy improved the user experience, leading to higher engagement and more time spent on the site.
With a logical URL hierarchy in place, we were able to improve internal linking between articles within the same category. This further strengthened the topical relevance of each category and passed ranking signals between pages, improving overall SEO performance.
The use of 301 redirects ensured that we did not lose any SEO value during the restructuring process. We successfully transferred existing rankings and traffic to the new URLs, ensuring a smooth transition without any negative impact on our search engine performance.
The URL restructuring project I led at News media organization was a key SEO strategy that significantly improved the topical authority of our categories, optimized our keyword usage, and boosted both organic traffic and user engagement. By aligning articles with their respective categories, we created a more organized content structure that was easy for both search engines and users to navigate. The successful implementation of this strategy resulted in higher rankings, better user experiences, and sustained SEO growth.
This case study demonstrates the importance of having a clear and consistent URL structure for maximizing SEO performance and ensuring that both categories and articles contribute to the overall success of a website’s search visibility.
