Whether or not you like it, you have an online reputation. With or without a website or social media account, you’ve got people saying things about you.
Most of us fear the negative online review yet ignore the positive ones. Here are a few tips to monitor the Internet looking for reviews, respond to all reviews and improve both your SEO and reputation at the same time.
At the end of this post is a YouTube presentation on Managing Your Online Reputation.
Locating Your Reputation?
Where exactly is your online reputation?
Your reputation is composed of all the comments and reviews written about you on the variety of review and business listing sites. Most of these sites aggregate business information about you and your medical practice to a comprehensive directory for their readers. Other sources include any number of social media platforms such as Facebook and Google+ and perhaps your own website (if you allow comments or questions to be asked).
There are dozens of directory sites; Yelp and Healthgrades are great examples. Fortunately, almost all of these sites allow patients to leave reviews about you and your practice.
Here’s how to automatically monitor the Internet to find all those reviews.
Monitor the Internet
First, “follow” yourself by creating a Google Alert. Google will send you an email anytime it finds your name or practice (actually whatever you want) mentioned on any the sites indexed by the search engine giant. This will cover most of the Internet.
For the few sites (e.g. Angie’s List) not indexed by Google, make sure to create a free account for your medical practice. Create a link to your website and add your contact email address. Angie’s List will automatically notify you when a new review is created.
If you’ve got social media accounts, you should already automatically receive notifications about new comments.
Claim Accounts
You are going to be surprised to find that many sites already have your practice listed. Search for yourself on Google+, Facebook and Angie’s List. In many instances, you’ll already be listed.
“Claim” these accounts so that you can respond to any reviews and correct any incorrect information. This is extremely if you’ve have EVER changed offices or practice locations.
Be consistent in using the same abbreviations and formats when entering your contact information (NAP).
Local Search Becomes Bonus
As a bonus, by claiming and linking all these aggregators to your own site you’ll also be improving the SEO of your website (because you should be linking each aggregator to your own website) and improving your rankings on local search (you’ll earn a position on the local search map).
All the best!
Randy