Have you Google’d yourself recently? Typing your name into the giant search engine can be very interesting and also very shocking. It is also something that your prospective patients are doing regularly. Chances are when a prospective patient searches for your name, they will see a Google search results page similar to the one below.
But there is one difference between the results for Dr. Luks and the search results for most MDs. And that is that Dr. Luks has very good control over what displays in his search results. So let’s look at the five steps you can take to control what appears in your search results.
1. Register yourname.com
When looking at Dr. Luks’s search results you will notice the top two results point to howardluksmd.com. Google loves domains that match the search phrase exactly. Google loves these exact match domains even more when they are relevant to the search or represent a brand. In this case, your name is your brand and you should register the domain yourname.com and create a website there.
2. Register Twitter.com/yourname
The third result in Dr. Luks’s search results is his Twitter URL http://twitter.com/hjluks we often see Twitter URLs outrank practice websites for physician names.
Claiming a Twitter profile will help you to secure more of the real estate for your search results.
3. Register Facebook.com/yourname
We don’t see Dr. Luks’s Facebook URL in the top 7 search results but being sure to register your Facebook URL will also help put you in control of what people see when they search for your name.
4. Claim your Google+ Local Listing
When searching for Dr. Luks you will notice Google reserves a large portion of the right side of the page for Dr. Luks’s Google+ Local listing.
Verifying this listing with Google and completing your Google+ profile will have a large impact on your ability to own your name as a brand online. You should also ask your web developer about using rel=author in your blog posts to further enhance your identity online.
5. Create a separate page on your practice web site for your bio
We often find clinic sites with all the provider bios packed into one page on the site. We also see a lot of search traffic for individual provider names on our sites. Separating out each provider into an individual page on your site with the provider name in the page title will help considerably with showing your practice website in the search results for your name.
6. Track your online reviews with our free tool
The three big arrows in Dr. Luks’s search results point to online review sites. These review sites represent the most challenging obstacle to reputation management but there are some things you can do to make tracking these reviews a lot easier on you. Many people will recommend you setup a Google Alert for your name so you are notified whenever your name is used online. This is a great idea but after doing this, you will notice you receive a lot of noise mixed in with the alerts you are actually interested in. Another tool for monitoring how you are represented online is our free reviews tracking tool.
Registration is easy. After following the link, just fill out the form.
And each week we monitor the top review sites and we will send you and email notification of any changes in your online reviews. An example report is below.
We are currently working on our next ebook which will focus specifically on these review sites and what doctors can do to manage what is being said about them. Our scheduled release date is February 15, 2013. If you would like to share any experiences you have had with online review sites, please post them in the comments below or email them to us. We’d love to share your experiences with the community.
Last year PEW reported that 80% of patients search online for medical information. We know that people are turning to the Internet for health related topics. These 6 steps will help you take control of what appears when prospective patients search for you by name.
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