The Importance Of Google Reviews Within Small Businesses
Hootsuite recently wrote a blog about the importance of Google Reviews within small businesses and happened to refer to one of our dental practices Cathedral Dental!
…Have you ever seen stars below a practice listing in Google?
These stars come from ratings and reviews left by patients… So what can you be doing to improve this for your practice, well it all begins with your Google Places listing!
According to Google, 1 out of every 5 searches is related to a location and Google Places is an improved search facility that focuses on this aspect. Google Places is free and allows businesses to put themselves on the web.
To make best use of your Google Places listing you should be encouraging patients to leave a review. Ask your satisfied patients to review and rate your services on Google Places. The higher your ratings, the more number of new patients you can hopefully achieve.
It is quite obvious that Google is beginning to put more importance on the use of reviews
It is no secret that Google is the search engine king! If your site is number 1 in the organic listings you will no doubt attract more calls and new patients walking through the door. Leaving a review not only helps potential patients learn about a business but it also tells Google that this business is active and popular. Google rewards businesses with better search rankings if their Google listing is complete and has reviews. Keep in mind that having more reviews than your competitor does not necessarily mean you will outrank them. However, having those ratings/reviews makes your business stand out and times savvy patients will look at a few listings, read the reviews and then pick up the phone.
Businesses have found some pretty creative ways to do this, like Cathedral Dental creating a Call to Action on the website which will hopefully encourage more patients to go and leave a review. They could also place a sheet on the reception desk to improve their chances of getting a review, with simple instruction of how to leave a review laid out in front of the patient. Getting as many reviews as possible is obviously the aim but only from genuine sources, don’t let patients leave a review from an computer/ipad in the practice as this will be picked up by Google as the same IP address, they need to be unique visitors.
Practice owners need to make sure they’re taking advantage of all the different review options, making efforts to earn quality reviews and communicating with the team about updating and managing comments that they get to the page. Responding to positive reviews always goes down well, as well as replying to negative reviews in an informative, friendly manner to try and alleviate the situation.
Gaining Quality Reviews
There are several different ways that you can make efforts to gain quality reviews from your patients:
- Ask loyal patients to leave a review when they get home from having some treatment – offer an incentive such as a free toothbrush!
- Make it easy to leave a review online by having a clear button on your website
- Educate people on your social networks about where they can review your practice
- If you see that someone left a negative review, try to reach out to that person and resolve the issue
- Put example reviews and testimonials on your website so people will want to participate
…Essentially Reviews will help build credibility for your practice and make you stand out from your competitors!
If you would like any further information then give the Dental Design team a call on: 01202677277.
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