Marketing is complex. With so many options, and not a lot of time – Orthopedic practices can easily become overwhelmed.
Daniel Goldberg of Gold Medical Marketing does a wonderful job breaking down some of the common missteps in Orthopedic group marketing in this great article, for further reading.
He breaks down the problems with the common marketing agency approach of publishing ‘fake review’ sites.
“The most common tool these companies use is to create several web pages and social media pages associated with your name so it will appear first if a patient searches your name and thus pushing the review site pages further down on Google. There are two major reasons this cannot and will not work.”
“First, Google is aware of these fake domains and pages and, over time, its algorithm will flag and penalize them which results in them being pushed to the third, fourth or fifth page of Google. This penalization is based on things such as the quality of the content on the page, the domain authority, the user experience, bounce rate and hundreds of other factors. When dozens of these sites associated with your name are flagged, it significantly diminishes your Google authority and is a waste of thousands of dollars.”
“Second is a lesser known function of Google Search known as “user intent.” For instance, when a patient searches, “Dr. Michael Smith reviews”, Google knows what they are looking for and will propagate the search results with the most reliable sources of reviews like Yelp, RateMDs, Vitals, Health Grades, etc. Because the fake sites and social pages have been flagged due to the factors above, they will never outrank these more legitimate sites. The same is true when trying to send out dozens of online press releases to bury negative reviews.”
“The truth is that the only way to lessen the impact of negative reviews is to drown them out with good ones. There are a few legitimate services that use text or email to encourage patients to leave a review on a particular review site. However, patient selection is vital in this process as asking every patient to leave a review is like opening Pandora’s box.”
SocialClimb helps our customers get real review flow at the real review sites and dramatically improve reputations by getting patients sharing about the care they receive. We measure a practice’s improvement by tracking its ‘Review Velocity.’
Review Velocity is made up of the rate of reviews on a weekly basis and the ratings on those reviews. Contact SocialClimb today to learn more about your practice’s Review Velocity and how you can change it.
