Syneos Health Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for ~20k organic keywords and drive ~30k monthly organic visits (worth ~$91k in equivalent ad spend), supported by an Authority Score of 44 (solid mid-tier authority with room to grow vs category leaders).
- Organic demand is heavily brand- and careers-led: “syneos health” drives ~39% of keyword traffic, with “syneos health careers” and related variants contributing another meaningful share.
- Traffic is concentrated on a few pages: the homepage (~17k visits; ~58%), /careers (~5k; ~17%), plus secondary hubs like participants/clinical trials and healthcare advertising service pages.
Growth Opportunity
- You trail key peers: iqvia.com (~90k visits; ~50k keywords) is roughly 3× your traffic and ~2.5× your keyword footprint, and you rank #4 of 4 in organic traffic among direct competitors.
- Your keyword mix suggests under-captured non-brand demand—you show some traction on terms like “healthcare marketing agency,” “pharmaceutical sales,” “clinical research associate,” and “FSP”, but they contribute relatively small traffic, indicating ranking/CTR improvements and deeper topic coverage could unlock more visits.
- Your large content surface area (e.g., Insights Hub, solutions pages, multiple subdomains) creates a template for systematic expansion into high-intent clinical development, commercialization, and medical communications topics—while also tightening technical consistency (notably http vs https and cross-subdomain alignment) to concentrate authority.
Assessment
- You have a strong brand moat and a credible authority base, but your organic performance is disproportionately concentrated in brand and recruiting.
- The competitive gap signals significant upside if you invest in higher-intent, non-brand content and improve how existing rankings translate into traffic.
- AirOps can help you scale this programmatically—building and refreshing content clusters systematically to close the visibility gap and capture more share of demand.
Competition at a Glance
Analysis of 3 direct competitors (IQVIA, ICON, and Parexel) shows syneoshealth.com currently draws 30,211 monthly organic visits and ranks for 20,055 keywords across organic search.
Within this set, Syneos Health ranks #4 of 4 in organic traffic and #3 of 4 in keyword coverage. The market leader is iqvia.com, generating 90,117 monthly organic visits from 50,369 ranking keywords, putting it at roughly 3× Syneos Health’s traffic and 2.5× its keyword footprint.
Overall market positioning indicates Syneos Health has a meaningful visibility gap versus the top two players (IQVIA and ICON), and it also underperforms Parexel, which earns higher traffic despite fewer ranking keywords—a sign that Syneos Health’s current rankings are translating into comparatively less traffic. This framing suggests the primary challenge is not only scale of rankings, but relative share of organic demand captured versus peers.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
A massive programmatic reference library detailing the specific regulatory, ethics committee, and IMP logistics requirements for conducting clinical trials in over 200 territories.
Example Keywords
- clinical trial application requirements Germany
- ethics committee approval timeline Brazil
- IMP import license requirements Japan
- CTA submission checklist Australia
- regulatory affairs outsourcing India
Rationale
Sponsors and biotech firms frequently search for localized regulatory intelligence during the planning phase of global trials. Providing this data at scale captures high-intent users looking for a CRO partner with local expertise.
Topical Authority
Syneos Health is a leading global CRO with existing regulatory solution pages and a high domain authority (AS 44), making it a credible source for international regulatory standards.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize internal country start-up playbooks, regulatory operations templates, and anonymized historical timeline data to provide differentiated, high-accuracy content.
Estimated Number of Pages
12,000+ (Covering 200+ countries across multiple regulatory categories like CTA, Ethics, and IMP logistics)
A comprehensive directory mapping clinical trial recruitment strategies and site feasibility benchmarks across hundreds of medical conditions and thousands of geographic locations.
Example Keywords
- patient recruitment for Type 2 Diabetes clinical trials
- clinical trial site feasibility Oncology New York
- diverse patient recruitment strategies Asthma
- recruiting patients for Rare Disease trials in Europe
- clinical trial site identification Cardiology
Rationale
Patient recruitment is the primary bottleneck in drug development; sponsors search for feasibility data by condition and location to de-risk their trial designs. This play captures that specific operational intent.
Topical Authority
Syneos already manages participant-facing properties and global site networks, providing the necessary legitimacy to rank for recruitment-related queries.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage anonymized recruitment performance benchmarks, site network characteristics, and patient-facing FAQ data from participant properties.
Estimated Number of Pages
60,000+ (Condition x Geography x Population Segment variants)
Highly targeted service pages that combine therapeutic area expertise with specific trial phases and drug modalities to capture niche outsourcing searches.
Example Keywords
- phase 2 clinical trial outsourcing immunology
- cell and gene therapy clinical trial services
- vaccine clinical trial operations partner
- Phase 3 oncology trial management
- biosimilar clinical development services
Rationale
Generic 'CRO services' keywords are highly competitive; targeting the intersection of TA, Phase, and Modality allows Syneos to capture long-tail, high-value sponsor queries.
Topical Authority
The domain already signals deep therapeutic depth in its sitemap, which provides a strong foundation for expanding into thousands of specific service-line variants.
Internal Data Sources
Use internal capability matrices, de-identified case studies, and SME quote snippets from scientific leadership to differentiate the AI-generated content.
Estimated Number of Pages
8,000+ (25+ Therapeutic Areas x 4 Phases x 10+ Modalities)
A programmatic guide for commercial and medical affairs leaders detailing the evidence and dossier requirements for Health Technology Assessments (HTA) and reimbursement across global markets.
Example Keywords
- HTA submission requirements France
- reimbursement pathway for medical devices UK
- cost effectiveness model requirements Canada
- G-BA submission evidence checklist Germany
- pricing and reimbursement strategy Japan
Rationale
Market access is a critical hurdle for drug launches; providing programmatic 'how-to' guides for specific agencies and countries attracts high-value consulting leads.
Topical Authority
Syneos Health has established consulting and HEOR (Health Economics and Outcomes Research) solutions, making it a natural authority for market access content.
Internal Data Sources
Incorporate internal HEOR frameworks, value story templates, and anonymized themes from prior successful payer submissions.
Estimated Number of Pages
4,000+ (Country x Agency x Product Type variants)
A library of service-oriented pages focused on the authoring and submission of specific regulated clinical documents required throughout the drug lifecycle.
Example Keywords
- clinical study report writing services
- investigator brochure authoring support
- DSUR preparation services
- CTD module 2.5 writer
- plain language summary clinical trial services
Rationale
Sponsors often outsource specific document-level tasks; these pages target the exact deliverables that clinical operations and regulatory leads are tasked with producing.
Topical Authority
Syneos' existing medical writing and regulatory affairs departments provide the subject matter expertise required to rank for these technical deliverables.
Internal Data Sources
Use sanitized deliverable templates (CSR shells, IB outlines), internal QC workflows, and document authoring checklists as context for the LLM.
Estimated Number of Pages
15,000+ (Deliverable Type x Indication x Phase x Region)
Improvements Summary
Rework the Healthcare Advertising and Healthcare Public Relations service pages to match “agency evaluation” intent with stronger above-the-fold positioning, scannable capabilities, compliance/MLR credibility, case studies, and FAQ sections marked up with FAQ schema. Refresh the related insights articles with updated dates, named expert authors, proprietary frameworks/checklists, and clear CTAs that link back to the service pages, supported by a tighter internal-link cluster.
Improvements Details
Map primary keywords to each page and rewrite core on-page elements: Advertising targets "pharmaceutical advertising agencies" and "medical advertising agencies"; PR targets "pharmaceutical pr agency"; supporting posts target "ehr advertising", "point of care marketing", and "account based marketing healthcare" with contextual in-body links using partial-match anchors. Add a new Communications hub/pillar page and 3–5 supporting pages (Launch Advertising, HCP Promotion, DTC Pharma Advertising, Point-of-Care & EHR Advertising, Healthcare ABM, MLR-ready content ops) and link them bidirectionally with “Related insights” modules. Fix technical blockers by forcing HTTPS via 301s/canonicals, adding Breadcrumb + FAQ structured data, and improving Core Web Vitals on media-heavy pages.
Improvements Rationale
Non-branded, high-CPC service queries have low current visibility, and the existing service pages read more like descriptions than vendor-comparison pages, so they miss key SERP intent signals. Building deeper page content plus a clear pillar-to-spoke internal linking structure concentrates topical authority and helps move “striking distance” terms from page 2 to page 1 while improving lead conversion via proof (case studies) and trust content (compliance, process, governance).
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
Ready to Get Growing?
Request access to the best–in–class growth strategies and workflows with AirOps