Good reviews are based on great customer service. Assuming that you’ve mastered the art of making your patients happy, you’re ready to capitalize on this opportunity to collect better dental reviews. Not only will positive reviews help your local SEO as we talked about last week, but it gives your patients a platform to promote your office through their online testimonials.

1. Be Where Your Patients Are

Your patients are visiting several review sites, so don’t focus all your energy in one place. Of course, you should be on Google, Yelp, and Facebook, but have you thought about all those industry specific sites you could be missing? Check the following sites to see how you are doing.

HealthGrades
ZocDoc
1-800-Dentist
Rate MD’s

2. Respond to Reviews

According to Software Advice, 62% of patients use online reviews as a first step to finding a new doctor. To make a good first impression, show how personable and caring you are toward your patients by responding to their comments and reviews when necessary online. Potential customers will see that you care enough to communicate and your reputation will start improving.

If you receive a negative review, remain calm, apologize, and respond appropriately. Try to fix the issue at hand. If the review is positive, all you have to do is thank them. Be brief, don’t make any special offers or ask anything further of them.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Ask

Getting better dental reviews will improve your practice’s SEO ranking. According to MOZ’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, online reviews are a contributing factor to how Google and other search engines decide to rank dental practice search results. If you want to be seen early on in a patient’s research process, you’ll need to collect more reviews than your competition.

A good portion of your patients would be willing to leave a review, but you have to ask them. A warm invitation opens the door for feedback. If they had a great experience, they’ll want to help you out.

4. Make it Easy

Even if your patient had a great experience during their dental appointment, they probably aren’t willing to jump through hoops to leave you one review. To increase the likelihood of receiving better dental reviews, make the process as simple as possible for the patient.

Send them a personal invite with a link to the review site you are targeting, giving the customer a choice to leave a review on a platform they already use or have an account for. The process is much more comfortable when a link is sent directly to their smartphone or mobile device. It is best to send them an invite while they are in the office because they have free time and the experience is still top-of-mind. The more seamless the process, the more likely a patient is to give you feedback.

5. Be Credible & Current

First of all, don’t buy fake reviews online or have your employees, friends, and family, leave you reviews to feign credibility. It is best to accumulate them naturally and ethically. Because buying reviews is against Google and Yelp’s terms of service, your SEO can be penalized, reviews can be deleted, or warnings can be posted on your page. You can see Google’s policy here.

Second, make sure your reviews are current. According to a study done by Bright Local, 44% of respondents say a review must be written within a month to be relevant. Acquiring reviews organically can be difficult, but dental practices that proactively seek reviews from their patients will see results.

Get better dental reviews with podium

Watch a demo to see how Podium’s cloud-based platform can help your practice take its online reputation to the next level. Podium’s efficient, mobile process can help your practice collect 15x the reviews that traditional platforms produce, which in turn will improve local SEO and ultimately boost revenues.

5 Steps to Better Online Dental Reviews

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