I'm fairly certain the gates to Hell feature a "People love us on Yelp" sticker on them.
Yelp is a source of frustration to so many doctors who know they have to deal with these reviews, but have no idea where to start. Our company receives countless complaints from our surgeon clients about how Yelp harasses them to buy services, almost to a point of threatening and intimidation. Others panic because of the negative ratings that show up at the top of Yelp's reviews, despite the date. Still others have had their business listed as closed (and still show up) and are offered paid "services" by Yelp when they contact them to correct the mistakes. You've probably heard the horror stories, as well as seen blatant examples of gaming the reviews. And you've also probably heard that good Yelp reviews help your business which may or may not be true. This series explores some ways that you can tame the Yelp beast, and calm your mind:
Step 1: Assess the Yelp Influence - If someone posts a negative review on Yelp, but no one sees it, does it still matter? You have to have a clear idea of how much, or little, Yelp impacts your practice. This impact is measured in two ways, Real World and Digital World.
Many practices ask a simple question of their Real World patients: How did you hear about us? If "Internet" is your only choice, you'll stay in the dark. Ask your patients how they found you, and ask for details! This cannot be stressed enough. If you do not have a listing of search engines and review sites on your intake form, add a simple checkbox card to your intake clipboard and start finding out how your patients see you online. You need this Real World count to compare to your online findings and the real world is walking through your doors every day - ask them!
Now lets look at the Digital World. The following steps should be taken by you, your medical assistant, or member of your staff who is invested in your success:
• Open up your web browser and ensure you are not signed in to Google or any other search engine. Search variations of your name (Dr. Your Name, Your Name, and Your Name, MD) along with towns and cities where you see patients (Dr. Your Name, Mytown, CO).
• Note where Yelp shows up in the search position, if at all (East and West coast doctors tend to show up on Yelp more than most other locations).
• Write down the search term and the position on page one of Google, as well as number of stars and reviews shown. Do this for all of the review sites as well. Don't worry about any other Google search pages other than page 1 for now. The first three to five results are all we're interested in. These links provide the majority of visits to websites. All links beyond first page of search results are 1 percent or lower.
• Now do the same search for your practice name, by itself and with towns and cities, note the position and number of reviews, and click through to check the reviews to see if your name is listed. Follow this process for your service line variations (orthopedic surgeon, spine surgeon, spine specialist, neurosurgeon, spine doctor, etc.) as well.
You have now established a baseline of what people in your area see when searching for you, your practice, and your specialty, and all of its variations. You'll want to repeat this process every month or quarter to see how effective you are in pushing Yelp down, and off, the search results.
Your Digital World findings should match your patient data in the Real World. Ideally, your patients should rank your website number one in the way they found you and formed opinions. If Yelp, or any other review site, tends to top the list, then you'll want to take action as we describe in later articles in this series.
Regardless of whether your Yelp reviews are showing up or not, you want to ensure you've taken action to own your Yelp presence. Google sees websites like Healthgrades, Yelp, and their own Google My Business pages as authoritative sources about you and your practice. If you have not done enough work on your online presence, Google may push Yelp and its ilk to the top of search results. We'll explore this further in Part 2 - Clean Up Your Yelp Account.
Dick Pepper is President of VoxMD, a medical marketing and technology company, and creator of PracticeRate, a reputation management and marketing tool. Visit VoxMD at http://voxmd.com, and feel free to ask questions at info@voxmd.com.