Last week, Hint hosted DPC Learnings Livestream: Fill Your Panel Without Social Media featuring speakers Andrew Newland, Founder & Owner of Direct Primary Care Marketing and Lauren Tancredi, Hint's Practice Development Lead and Co-Founder of Medicava. There were so many helpful gems that came out of this discussion that we wanted to share it in a concise format for you to refer back to as you think about growth for your direct primary care practice going into 2024 and beyond. 

SEO or search engine optimization is a powerful tool to leverage for prospects to find you online, so much so that it is 9 times more effective than social media to get new patients. Why? Because posting on social media has very limited reach. In fact, as little as 4.32% of your followers on Facebook may see your post and of that 1.9% of those may engage with your post, while SEO when done correctly can lead people who are already looking for what you offer in your area right to your website.

Andrew Newland breaks down SEO into 3 pillars: 

1. Technical 
2. Content
3. Local

Technical

Google and other search engines look for keywords, page speed and site authority. Therefore, it's important to confirm that you have the best H1 tag and there should only be one for each page of your website that identifies both what you do and where you do it. When it comes to looking for a new primary care doctor, location in particular matters, so adding your practice location, if you have one to your H1 headers is a must. Andrew explains that H2 tags can be more plentiful and can detail your service and offerings. 

Content

Google likes text, so Andrew recommends having 800 to 1100 words on each page. These words shouldn’t be a string of keywords, but meaningful content that informs your readers what you are about. Blog articles are an excellent way to further define content that can help prospective patients find you. Andrew suggests writing a minimum of 2 blog articles per month. Beware of relying on AI tools to create your blog content however because Google does not favor AI generated content, which can easily be duplicated across the internet.

Local

The local aspect of SEO often gets overlooked and Google loves local businesses, so be sure to create a Google listing for your direct primary care practice if you haven’t already. Your Google listing is not just a one time entry either, you can consistently post content to your Google listing and Andrew encourages you to post once a week as this will do more for your organic traffic than posting on social media. 

Learn more about SEO and see assessments of real direct primary care websites by watching the livestream, and you can even get a free SEO evaluation for your site by visiting Directprimarycaremarketing.co. Direct Primary Care Marketing is a Hint partner. Hint has vetted business solutions and tech partners creating an ecosystem to help support the success of your direct primary care practice.