Breaking into U.S. search results as a foreign company is harder than most marketing teams expect. Google’s local relevance signals, E-E-A-T standards, and the sheer depth of American competitors in pharmaceutical and biotech content make it a steep climb. When a UK-based life sciences firm came to us wanting to earn real visibility with U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech decision-makers, we knew keyword targeting alone would not get them there. We needed to build genuine search authority from the ground up, using entity-based and semantic SEO as the foundation. Here is how we did it.
What Made This Client’s Situation Unique
The company offered specialized contract research and scientific advisory services with strong credentials in European markets. Their challenge was that U.S. search engines had almost no context for who they were. Google’s Knowledge Graph showed no meaningful connections between the company and the core entities American buyers were searching for: clinical trial design, IND submissions, FDA regulatory strategy, CRO partnerships, and pharmaceutical outsourcing.
Their existing website had content, but it read as if written for a European audience. U.S.-specific regulatory bodies, terminology, and buyer concerns were absent. In entity SEO terms, the site was missing the co-occurrence signals that American competitors had spent years building. Before we wrote a single word of new content, we needed a clear picture of the gap.
“When a company enters a new market, their biggest SEO obstacle is not keywords. It is entity authority. Search engines need to understand who you are, what you do, and which established concepts you belong to. Building those connections through content is the real work.” — Emulent Marketing Strategy Team
Step 1: Building the Entity Inventory and Identifying Association Gaps
We started with a full content audit designed around entity association rather than keyword rankings. Using Google’s Natural Language API and manual SERP analysis, we extracted every entity the site currently signaled. Then we mapped what Google expected to see based on the top U.S.-ranking competitors in pharmaceutical CRO and life sciences advisory content.
The gaps fell into three clear categories:
The three types of entity gaps we found:
- Critical Gaps: Core American regulatory entities (FDA, IND, NDA, 505(b)(2)) were completely absent from the site. These appear in more than 80% of top-ranking U.S. competitor pages in their category.
- Depth Gaps: Some entities like “clinical trial phases” were mentioned but never developed. They existed as isolated terms with no supporting context, comparisons, or associated concepts.
- Context Gaps: Entities such as “bioanalytical services” appeared in passing but were never properly connected to the company’s primary service entities. Google had no signal that these belonged together.
Summary of our entity gap analysis:
Entity gap findings by category
| Entity Category |
Expected Presence in Top U.S. Results |
Client’s Prior Coverage |
Priority Level |
| FDA Regulatory Entities (IND, NDA, BLA) |
90%+ |
None |
Critical |
| U.S. Clinical Trial Infrastructure |
85% |
Minimal |
Critical |
| CRO Partnership Terms |
78% |
Partial |
High |
| Bioanalytical & PK/PD Services |
70% |
Low-depth mentions |
High |
| Drug Development Stage References |
65% |
Generic mentions |
Medium |
This table shaped our entire content plan. We were not just filling keyword gaps. We were teaching Google’s understanding of this company by building the correct entity relationships into every piece of content we produced.
Step 2: Mapping Semantic Co-occurrence Patterns From U.S. Competitors
Once we had the gap analysis in hand, we ran a competitor co-occurrence study across the five strongest U.S.-ranking life sciences service providers. We wanted to know which entity pairs appeared together most often, how frequently they co-occurred within the same paragraph, and which combinations no competitor had fully developed (white space opportunities).
This analysis gave us a co-occurrence matrix that informed every content brief we created. For example, we found that top-ranking pages consistently placed “FDA regulatory strategy” within two sentences of “Phase I clinical trials” and “IND submission.” Our client’s content never made that connection, even though they offered all three services.
“Competitor co-occurrence analysis is one of the most underused tools in content strategy. You are not copying competitors. You are learning what Google already considers normal for a topic, so you can meet that baseline and then go further.” — Emulent Marketing Strategy Team
What we learned from cross-competitor analysis:
- Consensus Gaps: Entity pairs used by four or more competitors that the client was missing entirely. These became mandatory inclusions in every relevant page.
- Leader Patterns: Specific entity combinations used by the top two ranking competitors. These received special attention in pillar content and service pages.
- White Space: Relevant entity pairings that no competitor covered well, particularly around EU-to-U.S. regulatory translation and cross-border development timelines. These became the foundation for content that genuinely differentiated the client.
Co-occurrence opportunity summary
| Entity Pair |
Used by Competitors |
Client Coverage |
Action Taken |
| FDA strategy + IND submission |
4 out of 5 |
None |
Added to 6 pages |
| CRO services + Phase I safety |
5 out of 5 |
None |
New pillar content |
| EU-to-U.S. regulatory pathway |
0 out of 5 |
None |
White space content series |
| Bioanalytical services + PK/PD |
3 out of 5 |
Low-depth |
Service page expansion |
| Clinical trial design + sponsor support |
4 out of 5 |
Partial |
Depth improvement on 3 pages |
Step 3: Creating Entity-Focused Content Briefs With Proximity and Frequency Guidelines
With the entity map complete, we built detailed content briefs for every planned page. These were not standard SEO briefs with a keyword list and a word count target. Each brief specified which entities needed to appear together, how many times per 1,000 words each needed to show up, and where in the content specific entity pairings had to be placed.
For example, the pillar content targeting “pharmaceutical CRO services” required that “FDA regulatory strategy” appear within the same paragraph as “IND submission” at least three times. The introduction had to include both the primary entity and supporting regulatory body references within the first 150 words. Every H2 section had to reference the primary service entity at least once.
How we structured each content brief:
- Tier 1 Entities (Required): Primary service terms and regulatory entities with minimum and maximum mention counts and required first-appearance placement.
- Tier 2 Entities (Recommended): Supporting concepts that add scientific credibility, with guidance on which sections to introduce them in.
- Tier 3 Entities (Value-Add): Differentiating terms that competitors did not fully cover, particularly around EU-U.S. cross-border drug development processes.
- Proximity Rules: Clear instructions for which entities must appear in the same paragraph, the same section, or within a set number of sentences of each other.
This level of specificity allowed the writing team to produce content that read naturally for human readers while building exactly the entity relationships we needed Google to recognize.
“The brief is everything. When writers understand not just what to say but where specific concepts need to appear relative to each other, the output is both search-smart and genuinely readable. Those two goals are not in conflict.” — Emulent Marketing Strategy Team
Step 4: Content Production Targeting American Pharmaceutical and Biotech Decision-Makers
The writing itself required a deliberate shift in tone, terminology, and perspective. European regulatory language had to give way to FDA-centric language. Content that referenced EMA processes was recontextualized to explain how those processes mapped to American equivalents, which actually became a genuine selling point rather than a limitation.
We produced content across three structural layers: service pages anchored in entity-rich descriptions of specific offerings, educational content addressing decision-maker questions at the mid-funnel stage (such as how to evaluate CRO partners for Phase I trials), and authority content that established the company’s scientific credibility for American audiences unfamiliar with the brand.
Content categories produced and their primary entity function:
- Service Pages: Built to satisfy Tier 1 entity requirements with precise proximity and frequency targets. These pages addressed specific CRO service offerings with FDA and clinical trial entity co-occurrence baked in.
- Educational Articles: Targeted mid-funnel decision-maker questions using supporting entity clusters. These created the topical authority that service pages alone could not build.
- Cross-Border Regulatory Guides: White space content that no competitor had developed. These pages covered EU-to-U.S. drug development translation in practical terms, establishing the client as the only resource covering this specific angle.
- Author Profiles: Named scientific contributors with verifiable credentials. This directly supported Google’s E-E-A-T evaluation of the site and linked human experts to the company’s primary entities.
We also aligned all content with the Google E-E-A-T standards that matter most in pharmaceutical content, where demonstrating genuine expertise is not optional. Named authors with real credentials, references to specific regulatory processes, and concrete scientific terminology all contributed to stronger authority signals.
The Results: From Unknown to Recognized in U.S. Search
Within six months of the content program launching, the company moved from page four and beyond to consistent first-page positioning for several high-value terms in pharmaceutical CRO and regulatory advisory search categories. The white space content around EU-to-U.S. regulatory translation began ranking within 90 days, as there was no meaningful U.S. competition for those specific entity combinations.
Key outcome metrics across the campaign period:
| Metric |
Before Campaign |
After 6 Months |
| First-page U.S. rankings (target terms) |
2 |
21 |
| Organic sessions from U.S. visitors |
Baseline index 100 |
Index 380 |
| Inbound inquiry form completions |
Baseline index 100 |
Index 290 |
| Average content entity coverage score |
32% of expected entities |
84% of expected entities |
| Google Knowledge Panel entity associations |
None relevant to U.S. services |
Multiple FDA and CRO category associations |
The most meaningful result was not the rankings. It was the shift in how Google categorized the company. By building the right entity relationships through deliberate, structured content, the site moved from being an unknown foreign domain to one Google recognized as genuinely relevant to American pharmaceutical and biotech search queries.
“Rankings are an output. Entity authority is the input. When you build real topical relationships through content that covers subjects the way experts actually cover them, rankings follow. This case showed us that geography is not the obstacle people think it is when the entity strategy is right.” — Emulent Marketing Strategy Team
What This Means for Life Sciences Companies Entering the U.S. Market
If you are a pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences company trying to earn U.S. search visibility, keyword lists and standard content briefs will not move the needle the way entity-based strategy does. American search is competitive, and Google has sophisticated expectations about what belongs on a credible pharmaceutical or CRO website. Meeting those expectations requires understanding which entities your content needs to contain, how they need to relate to each other, and where your competitors have left gaps you can fill better than anyone else.
The process we used here applies directly to any organization entering a new geographic market or trying to build authority in a category where they are not yet recognized. It requires patience and precision, but the results compound in ways that paid search cannot replicate.
If you are working through similar challenges, our guide to modern entity-based SEO is a solid place to start. You can also explore our broader life sciences marketing services and our dedicated entity SEO and semantic optimization services to see how we approach this work across the industry.
Ready to Build Real Search Authority for Your Life Sciences Brand?
Building U.S. search authority as a foreign life sciences company is a specific challenge that requires a specific approach. We have done this work before, and we know where most companies go wrong. If your pharmaceutical or life sciences marketing is not producing the U.S. visibility you need, contact the Emulent team. We will look at where your entity coverage is today and show you exactly what it will take to get where you need to go.
