Helping dentists with Google reviews

Reviews are important for search ranking and reputation management – here’s how to encourage them….

Google reviews are known to be an important factor for helping a website to appear prominently in the “local” search results as well as a powerful mechanism for building reputation. Consequently it is important to seek positive patient reviews to help promote your dental practice.

But here’s the problem. The process to leave a review on Google is not entirely straightforward and your patients, even your strongest proponents, are fickle when it comes to using their precious time to leave you a rating. I imagine we’ve all done it? How many times have you been to a restaurant, had a great meal and thought about leaving a positive review on Google? Only then to get home and forget all about it as the daily routine takes precedence? Probably lots of us?

The situation is made a little more convoluted in that you need a Google account to leave a review – so not only do you have to locate the business on the web, but also set up a Google account to make the review. For most, this is a bridge too far, even though in reality it only takes a few minutes.

So what can be done to facilitate the process?

Firstly, here’s what you musn’t do:

• don’t leave the reviews yourself – Google will spot this and penalise you
• don’t ask patients to leave reviews on the practice PC – Google knows where you are by IP address and multiple reviews from a single PC will be flagged as spam
• don’t fabricate reviews – chances are you will be caught out
• don’t pay for reviews – services do exist that offer this but Google will catch up with you

It is however appropriate to facilitate the review process i.e guiding your patients in how to do it and encouraging them if they feel they have received good service.

At Dental Media, we help our marketing clients to get the ball rolling by issuing them with the following guidelines to help patients locate and use the Google review service. These can be customised with the practice branding as appropriate and then handed out with a brief explanation and polite follow-up.

Simple Google review guidlines for dental practices to pass to patients:

Add the following to a ‘Word’ document or similar along with some simple branding or if budget allows, let you designer pull together something fancier – both will work.

Writing a review for “Example Dental Care” on Google

We would be very grateful if you would post a review of your experience at Example Dental Care on Google. Positive reviews help us to promote our practice, grow our business and in turn allow us to continue to offer excellent dental services for you and your family.

• Please use your browser to navigate to:https://plus.google.com/example-dental-care-url-here/about?hl=enThis is the Google+ Local page for Example Dental Care and where your review will appear
• Select the “Write a Review” button – if you have a Google account you will be asked to log in. Once logged in you will be able to enter and publish your review.
• If you do not have a Google account, please select the “Sign Up” link to proceed. Complete all the fields and follow the process to create a Google Account.
• When your account is created, you will be able to navigate back to the web link shown at the top of the page in order to place your review.
• Selecting the “Write a Review” button will pop up a new box with a scoring system and dialogue box. Please select your score and enter a few lines of text to describe your experience at Example Dental Care. Google is now using several factors in its rating and reviews system so you may be asked to fill in scores for several factors e.g. quality, comfort etc. Google then takes an average of these scores to publish alongside your review.
• Once you have completed all sections, please select “Publish” to complete the process. Google may retain reviews for verification before publishing but on occasions the reviews will appear quickly.
• Thank you for your time and support for Example Dental Care – we do appreciate it.

Note – Google’s review process is evolving so please check your instructions regularly to ensure that they are in step.

This is just one example of how you can help your patients to leave appropriate reviews of your practice. Please get in touch for more hints and tips.

Summary

As we’ve described, Google reviews are important for dentists, particularly for helping to penetrate local search ranking results. Whilst the process is slightly convoluted, it is well worthwhile making the effort to encourage your patients and to help them out with a set of simple instructions to guide them on their way.

If you would like to discuss this or other aspects of marketing for dentists, please take a look through our blog or call the Dental Media team on 01332 672548 for obligation-free advice.