When choosing a healthcare professional, millions of people turn to the Internet to assess a practice’s reputation. With online reputation management services, healthcare professionals can effectively control and improve their online reputation. Because of their importance, reviews are typically listed towards the top of a search engine’s results. If the reviews are negative, or not managed properly, potential patients will turn away from your practice and go to your competitors. Reputation management service providers begin by addressing current patients, as they are an important part of enhancing a practice’s online presence. An online reputation management service can design and implement avenues for positive feedback by focusing on current patients. This could include email review requests, or portals in which to review the practice, right in the office.
Monitoring & Addressing Online Reviews
Additionally, through Internet reputation management, all online reviews, from any website, can be consolidated, monitored, and addressed. This function eliminates the need for your practice to search and parse through reviews. This practice will save you time, and allow your staff to put the focus back on your core business of healthcare.
If patients are dissatisfied with a service, they are encouraged to use private means of communication. This way, issues can be promptly ameliorated without impacting your online reviews. Furthermore, a practice can receive alerts if negative content is posted. Any negative comments and reviews are then immediately addressed, turning unhappy patients into satisfied ones.
Removing Negative Search Results From Google
Some services also remove or suppress negative search results from Google. These services will promote and create positive content about your practice and push it to the top of the search result page. So when these positive results move to the top, they overtake the negative results and the net effect is that the negative results start to go down and even vanish from the first page. The technique is known as reverse seo. Why is this useful? “Because 9 out of 10 people will not even scroll down the first page of Google. Even less will actually look at the second page, they would rather refine their query and find that they are looking for on the first page of Google” according online reputation management expert Herman Tumurcuoglu. He believes that the trust in Google search results are so great, that we are being wired to find what we are looking for instantly at the very top of the search results. He points out to ever smaller devices as part of this subconscious transition. He also believes that healthcare professionals need to hire firms especially because they are licensed to practice under their name and they have just one reputation for life. In a complex digital landscape, he sees people being hired to intentionally smudge the good reputation of practitioners.
So whether you want to shore up public opinion about your practice or suppress negative search results by “anonymous” people, the use of an online reputation management service can guarantee improvement of your online reputation. With a positive and robust online presence, your standing in the healthcare field will be bolstered. Potential patients will gain confidence in your practice through your strong Internet presence and positive reviews. Your enhanced Internet reputation will help get a patient’s foot in the door, which will ultimately improve your practice and its revenues.
