Speaker: Katja Reuter, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine at the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC; Director of Digital Innovation and Communication for the Southern California Clinical and Translational Research Institute (SC CTSI)

Overview: 

For many websites, commercial or not, significant visitor traffic comes via search engines such as Google. According to Pew Internet Research, more than 80% of Americans use the Internet to search for health information. But will your study be found by these engines? A compelling description of a research study online can be critical to attracting participants. Dr. Reuter will highlight two important aspects of creating a study recruitment webpage: 

1. We will review the steps required to develop a study webpage using the publishing tool of the USC Clinical Studies Directory. The study pages are designed to help patients and their families who search online to find ongoing clinical studies at USC and to contact the study team. 
2. Dr. Reuter will suggest tips for research teams to increase the discoverability of their study pages. She will present approaches to developing effective study page content. For example, you will learn about search engine optimization (SEO) and how to select popular keywords for your study title and description to increase the chances of being found by online information seekers. SEO is a well-known concept in the marketing world to improve search rankings of web content. It involves constructing online content so that users are guided to it because it is highly ranked on the first search results page.