Some companies will offer doctor online reputation repair as marketing services. It aims to improve the expertise and authority of the medical professional. For a career that is often exposed to allegations of medical malpractice, embarrassing incidents, and poor press coverage, they need someone who will protect their reputation.
They will also have to deal with occasional lawsuits, damaging the reputation they’ve built over the years. Ignoring this can lead to lost opportunities and reduced profits. Your patients will think twice before working with you since people might think that you have a questionable personality.
Guide on Doctor Online Reputation Fix
Based on recent numbers, more than 90% of the patients will search for their medical service providers online before making their appointment. These audiences will highly consider the online reviews before making their choice.
An article that will appear on the first page of the search result associated with the doctor’s name is the new way to reach out to your prospects. Moreover, if a negative article about your practice appears in front of the Google search result, don’t expect it to disappear magically.
You need to be proactive in dealing with this. Here are some of our recommendations.
Building a Website
Your website will serve as the core of your doctor online reputation management. Make sure that it will be dedicated to your practice and yourself. The website can carry a bunch of purposes.
For instance, it helps in your brand awareness. It is a platform that introduces your name in the industry and showcases your expertise and proficiency.
You can also highlight your values; study shows that most customers will choose a service or company who shares the same values. If you have customer testimonies, adding a stellar review to your webpage will give your audience insight and convince them that you are the right choice for the job.
How Do You Build a Website for Your Medical Service?
There are a couple of rules you need to keep in mind when developing a website dedicated to your practice. Start by creating a comprehensive bio page. It should cover the achievements and acknowledgments the doctor has received over the years.
It should also highlight the experience and specialties to help Google and the audience understands your credentials and expertise. Next, you have to populate it with content.
Therefore, adding a blog section offers several benefits. You can showcase your credibility by developing an article that answers their everyday problems.
Google also loves fresh and quality content. This helps in improving the SERP of your website. You should also think about showcasing some of your stellar reviews.
You may also consider enabling the comment section to keep the conversation lively. However, you must moderate the comment section; otherwise, you will only receive spam comments, which is not good for your doctor online reputation.
The comment section allows you to interact with your audience and answer some of their questions. Be sure there is a contact information page so your audience will know how to reach out to you.
What is the Importance of a Website in Managing Your Reputation?
If you implement the right SEO strategy, having a website will increase your online visibility. Your audience will find you when they need you.
Even if they found a negative review about your company, a website can help you make a powerful first impression. Next, a website enables you to deliver critical and valuable information about your practice and company.
Your website will be the center of your online marketing and doctor online reputation campaign. For instance, creating backlinks helps in improving the SERP of your website.
You won’t be able to perform this without a website. For this reputation management to succeed, you want a digital asset wherein you are in complete control.
Using a Blog
All marketing experts will tell you that having a blog is the best way to maintain a solid online authority and visibility. Blog leaves a strong digital footprint that is easy for your audience to find.
It is a chance for you to talk to your prospects and loyal patients. This helps you showcase your expertise, bring in more clients, and increase your profits.
Besides increasing your repeat business and customer retention rate, it also boosts your Rank on Google search results.
Why Should You Launch a Blog?
Managing a blog may appear to be a daunting task. It is not that difficult once you get used to it. The first thing you need to know is how often you will update the content.
Ask yourself if you have the time to do this. If not, some freelancers are willing to handle the task. If we look at a blog as a part of doctor online reputation management, we will realize that it has too many benefits to offer, making it difficult for marketers to ignore.
Here are some reasons to convince you that a blog is necessary to fix your reputation.
- Google loves amazing content, and they will reward it by placing them on the first page of the Google search result. This helps in driving organic traffic to your website.
- With well-written and researched blog posts, it offers an opportunity to showcase your expertise to your audience. It could be the easiest method for you to establish your online credibility.
- Your blog can act as a forum wherein you can talk about health issues that could perplex your audience. You can show them your credentials and convince them that you are the best solution provider.
- Most journalists and bloggers will contact a licensed physician to verify facts. If you have blogs, it would be typical for the journalists to quote the things you say, making it an instant and free Press Release.
Guest Posting
To ensure that you will have a solid and high doctor online reputation, you must develop concrete, well-written content associated with your name.
You will then have to publish this on several platforms. You may ask why since you think your blog would be enough to share your content. However, for the newly created website, it would be difficult for you to appear on the search result.
Therefore, even if you have awesome content, it will remain buried on the last page of the search result. You don’t want your content appearing on page 2, only page 1 matters.
Start by determining what topics your audience look for. This should be a subject that allows you to showcase your expertise. Create an article that you can publish under your name.
Others may reach out to an agency that has partnered with other blogs. This will be a powerful backlink that will send juice to your site.
Guest posting is probably one of the most apparent doctor online reputation repair strategies that help reclaim the client’s reputation. There are different benefits that this strategy offers, but the most obvious one would be link building.
Guest posting can be used on other websites, blogs, or forums. When adding a hyperlink to the article, be very mindful of the anchor text you will use.
Improve Your Social Media Presence
As mentioned, Google will use more than 200 signals to rank a website on the search result. Allegedly, one of them would be social signals. When implementing a doctor online reputation campaign, it is vital to focus on major signals that influence the ranking on Google.
Therefore, you need to ensure that you have a well-established presence on different social media platforms. Google focuses explicitly on the engagement rate, the number of visits, and mentions.
This relationship between social media sites and the Google search result dictates the success of most reputation management campaigns.
How to Maintain a Strong Social Media Presence?
There are various ways to develop a solid social media presence. One is to remain active. You will have to post content regularly.
However, you will need to consider the materials you are sharing on this platform carefully. For instance, post things that will solve the problems of your audience.
With this, you can quickly build your credibility, and the audience will trust you. This is the best way to gain followers. You may add images and videos since the study shows they receive a higher engagement rate.
Do not forget to engage with your audience. This is a perfect way to build a relationship with them and boost your doctor online reputation. Also, manage the reviews that you’ve been getting. Be sure that you know how to respond to all of them appropriately.
Claiming Online Listing
Based on the recent reports of Google, at least 97% of the users will search for the names of the business online. Due to this, most companies will focus more on local SEO. Part of the local SEO strategy is to reclaim your business on different listing sites.
The biggest is perhaps GMB or Google My Business. Ensure the information here is accurate, including the contact information, business hours, contact person, etc. It should also be consistent.
Otherwise, Google may interpret them as different business entities.
Responding to Reviews
We slightly mentioned that you need to respond to all reviews. Customers feel that their opinions are valued if the concerned person notices them.
Remember that all doctor online reputation crises started with a dissatisfied customer you failed to notice. Remember that responding aggressively to negative reviews will only lead to more issues.
It would be best to assure them that you are investigating the situation and acknowledging their complaints. Negative reviews are not the only problems that doctors will encounter.
Another unfortunate practice would be not responding to all kinds of reviews. Remember that reviews will not only be perused by patients.
About 83% of the doctors will also read reviews, and 35% will monitor the reviews of their rivals in the business. Therefore, it will not only affect your credibility toward the patient, but it may affect your standing in the medical community.
We understand that it is difficult not to be emotional when encountering a terrible customer review, but you must remain rational.
What is the Best Way to Respond to Reviews?
For the positive reviews, it will be enough to thank them for choosing your medical service. Express how you appreciate them and remind them that if they ever need your assistance again in the future, you will gladly help them.
Sometimes, it will also be beneficial for you to remind them about how referrals could help you maintain your business viability. This is how you can transform these audiences into loyal clients and perform your doctor online reputation repair.
For a negative review, start by acknowledging the downsides of your business. Thank them for reaching out to you on this problem, then try to move the conversation away from the public’s eyes.
You should update them on the development of their complaint; you need to be as transparent as possible to them. This will give them confidence that you are doing something to fix their issues.
Creating Online Profiles
Your social media profiles may not be enough to spread your brand awareness campaign and improve your doctor online reputation. You need to guarantee that your audience can find you on various platforms to help you achieve an excellent organic rank on Google Search results.
Some of the best platforms for medical professional includes:
- WebMD- This is probably one of the biggest directories for health professionals. It also showcases some of the healthcare news. This enables the physicians to create a free profile.
- Sharecare- It is an online wellness website and a doctor directory platform. This will include the complete profile of the doctor, such as the educational background, specialties, years of experience, biographical information, and the insurance plan.
- Doximity- This is a social networking site for doctors and other medical professionals. Based on the recent numbers, it has more than 1,000,000 profiles with verified clinician profiles. This means that about 50% of the doctors in the US are found here.
For medical professionals, their doctor online reputation highly matters. They have built their credibility for years and can’t afford this to be ruined. However, there are instances when they can’t avoid events that will influence them. Therefore, an agency that performs doctor online reputation management is necessary.
Tags: reputation management