Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists Bulletin Summer 2017 - 66

Presentation Summary

beat the bid of the next highest bidder. Bid
amounts vary by keyword, business locale, and
the amount of competition. Once considered
taboo, advertising your practice in search engine
results may be necessary if you are in a competitive area or your practice location does not allow
for you to appear on the first page naturally.
Because 90% of visitors to your practice's website
come from Google searches, Dr. Jorgensen recommends spending your advertising dollars on
AdWords rather than paying for premium listings
or ads on other search engines.
The second section of a results page is the local
pack, which is comprised of the best search
results for local businesses matching the search
criteria. This section displays the three most
relevant results but links to all other pertinent
businesses in the area. Owners provide the information about their business on their Google My
Business listing. An important visual feature of
the local pack is the prominent display of the
average star rating for each business. While the
details of Google's search algorithms are not
public, Google has revealed general information
about what is important in its search results. It is
currently believed that the position of businesses
in the local pack is influenced by the business
location, name, star ratings, and other miscellaneous SEO factors.
Perhaps the most important part of a business's
Google listing is the star rating. Reviews influence how today's consumers make buying decisions, and good or bad reviews can make or break
a business. The best way to inoculate one's business against a bad review is the presence of multiple good ones. The key to getting good reviews
is to provide amazing customer service and then
ask happy patients to share their experiences.
There are many reputation management services
that can provide technology to help automate
this process. Once the technology is in place, it is

also helpful to incentivize the orthodontic team
to consistently ask for reviews.
Monitor Your Reviews
Dr. Jorgensen explained the importance of constantly monitoring review sites. In the same way
that reputation companies can help you collect
reviews, they can also monitor the web for new
reviews. Dr. Jorgensen showed several examples
of bad reviews and examples of good and bad
responses. His advice for responding to a bad
review is to:
1. Stay calm and dignified.
2. Thank the reviewer for his/her feedback.
3. Express empathy and humility for his/her bad
experience.
4. Offer your help to resolve the situation.
5. Take the discussion offline.
Although reputation companies can be paid
to respond to bad reviews on your behalf, Dr.
Jorgensen believes that reviews should be used
to improve your customer service and should be
handled personally by the doctor.
The third and final section of a SERP is the
organic results. The position of these results is
determined by multiple factors including practice
name, location, website content, authority (determined by website traffic and links to the site
from other sites on the web), and even the way
the website itself is organized and coded. These
are the elements of Search Engine Optimization
(SEO), a complex science that is best left to web
professionals. The first step in ranking well is to
have a modern, interesting website. If your site is
over five years old, it was coded using antiquated
scripting that does not work correctly with
today's mobile technologies. Dr. Jorgensen suggested that if your website is out of date, creating a new one is more important than utilizing
AdWords or the local pack.
continued on page 67

PCSO Bulletin  Summer 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists Bulletin Summer 2017