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BUSINESS ADVISOR
accounts or site. Second, it gives you the opportunity to respond. You
have the opportunity — if you respond quickly and politely — to
change the opinion of that patient and make a positive impression on
many potential patients. Plus, negative reviews are not nearly as common as we tend to fear. While approximately 80% of people research
products online, only about 20% read reviews of healthcare professionals and treatments. And only 3% to 4% of adults have even left
reviews of treatments, hospitals or healthcare providers online.
The public will find personal information (or those negative reviews).
To this concern, I have more bad news/good news. Once pictures of your children, your home address or your embarrassing high
school photos are online, it is difficult to completely eliminate any
trace of them. You also can't stop them from appearing in Google
search results.
You can influence Google search results when people are looking
for information about you. If you have a blog with multiple categories,
and if you add new content on a regular basis, you will rank higher
than if you only have a static website. Additionally, Google seems to
respect credible sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so you
should create accounts on each for search results at least. The information people find out about you on your blog and social media sites
like Twitter and Facebook is all content you created. In theory at
least, that should be what you want the public to see.
If you want an example of search rankings, do a quick search for
your name. What appears? Do you like what appears? Now search
"Dr. David Geier" and see the difference. By the way, if you stopped
to search, did you notice what you did? I'm willing to bet you
stopped after looking through the first page of results. Very rarely do
people go past the first page of results when they search Google for
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S E P T E M B E R 2013 | O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
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