Protect Your Reputation - Online Reviews Can Make or Break Your Chiropractic Practice

Protect Your Reputation!

Online reviews can help you better understand how your patients view you, providing the opportunity to take your client’s evaluations and make adjustments if necessary. The number one way to build your practice business is to convince a potential client to walk through your door.

Essentially, having a praise-worthy online review is the equivalent to someone standing on their rooftop, shouting out just how amazing you are. The credibility of online ratings and reviews can not be matched even with referrals.

At the same time, some online review sites are better than others. It’s like the difference between shouting in the middle of a big city with a population in the millions and shouting in the middle of a dessert…where the only thing that is going to hear how fantastic your office is will likely be a snake. And maybe a bird or two. Either way, it’s not really going to help you.

You need to get reviews on the online directories people use most. Our Chiropractic Online Review Building tool is specifically dedicated to help you get more 5 star reviews from happy patients, protecting you from bad reviews and displaying your 5 star reviews.

Identify Important Citations

Moz is a great place to start as this is a website that provides a listing of the top citations for various fields or areas of business, chiropractic included. What are citations?

Moz describes citations as “a mention of your business name with another piece of business information, such as your phone number, address, website, or a combination of the three.” These are important because they affect your rank in search results. In other words, the more citations you have, the greater your chance of appearing on the very first page when someone searches for your services.

If you do a citation search by category on Moz, selecting “chiropractors” from the long list of profession-based options, you will find that the top citation sources specifically for Chiropractors are as follows.

Top Citation Sources for Chiropractors

Since these are the sites with the highest number of citations these are the sites you want to target for your online reviews (we’ll go more into each of these sites in the next edition).

Another way to use Moz is to do a search of the best citation sources by U.S. city. This enables you to hone in on the sites that people are using most in your area so you get a “bigger bang for your buck,” or more return on your investment (whether that investment involves time, money, or both).

As an example, if you do business in or around Atlanta, Georgia, your top two three sites for citations are Yelp (#1), Yellow Pages (#2), and Citysearch (#3). However, if you’re located closer to Detroit, Michigan, you’ll want to focus on Yellow Pages first, Yelp second, and Citysearch third as those are the sites most used in that region.

Additionally, even though Lansing, Michigan is only 90 miles from Detroit, if your chiropractic practice is there, your top three sites are NWI Times (#1), Yellow Pages (#2), and Mlive (#3). Knowing this type of information is critical so you know exactly which online sites to target for better search rank in your area.

Now let’s talk about the top sites for chiropractors in general so you can begin working on either establishing or improving your online reputation on them.

A Closer Look at the Top Online Directories

YELP

You simply cannot talk about online reviews without talking about Yelp. According to their metrics, this site provides reviews to approximately 86 million new mobile visitors monthly (which Yelp defines as someone who has not visited the site in the previous 90 days) and another 75 million who visit this site using a desktop computer. That’s 161 million “new” people every month!

In addition to being extremely popular, Yelp has also become one of the preferred sites for reviews because it’s so easy to use. Simply put in the type of business you want to find, enter a search location, and not only do you get a list of the most highly rated options, but you also get a map so you can see where each one is located.

Included on this initial search page are how many stars the business has overall (based on a 5-star scale), the number of reviews submitted for that specific business, what category it’s in, a photo associated with the business, and an address and phone number. So, if someone didn’t have much time, realistically, he or she could get a good basic idea of whether or not they want to do business with you based on this information alone.

And if they click on your business because they’re interested and want to learn more, then they’re taken to a page which provides even more information about your business (such as your website, hours, whether or not you take appointments, and if you accept insurance) as well as reviews submitted by current and/or past patients.

Good, bad, or indifferent…this is where potential customers can go to learn what others liked and disliked about your chiropractic practice. They can even vote on other people’s reviews, noting whether they’re useful, funny, or cool—making it easier for others to find the exact type of reviews they’re looking for or adding credibility to the review itself.

To make sure your business is listed on Yelp, simply go to their Claiming your Business page. It will walk you through the process. Don’t worry if your business isn’t there already. It gives you the option to add it, increasing the likelihood that you’ll be found when you do (remember the citations!)

YP (a.k.a. Yellow Pages)

The second best online review website for chiropractors is Yellow Pages. This site reports that it gets almost 70 million visitors monthly between their YP app and yellowpages.com, giving you access to even more prospective clients when growing your chiropractic practice.

The way prospective patients search on Yellow Pages is very similar to how they search on Yelp. They simply input the business type and location and they’re taken to a results page that shows a list of options, providing basic information about the business itself, as well as how many reviews there are and a basic star rating. The actual business page contains more detailed information as well (hours of operation, link to website and phone number), but not whether you accept insurance or take appointments so it’s slightly more limited in scope.

The one thing that Yellow Pages has that Yelp does not is a section titled “Sponsored Links.” This is where the viewer can be easily and conveniently connected to any online deals that you currently offer, such as if you have an introductory deal listed on Groupon, increasing the likelihood that they’ll follow through and actually come in for your chiropractic services once they’ve found you.

Listings on this site are free; just go to their website and enter your business information.

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most used social media sites with more than 1 billion people interacting on it daily. Yes, that’s billion. So this is definitely an online site you want to make sure you create a chiropractic business profile page on.

As far as reviews are concerned, there’s a tab right at the top of your profile page that people can click on to see what others have had to say about doing business with you. They’re provided with an overall star rating based on these reviews in total, as well as the individual reviews themselves so they can read each one to determine whether or not you’re the chiropractor for them. They can even use tabs at the top of the review screen to help them filter the reviews based on helpfulness, date of the review, and star rating.

Using Facebook also offers the viewer a distinct advantage in that they can easily click to your Timeline, the page where you publish your posts, and learn more about you from the types of pictures and stories you share. It’s kind of like going to your office and sitting in a chair in the waiting room. They get to hear what all of your patients are saying about you while watching how you act and react at the same time.

Yahoo! Local

The fourth best online review site is Yahoo! Local. Search Engine Land reports that it is the second most used search site (losing only to Google) with 80 percent of its users accessing it daily…which is likely why it landed so high on Moz’s list.

When searching using Yahoo! Local, the main difference is, although it has its own listing for the businesses, it pulls reviews from other sites—like Yelp. Therefore, it’s more like a middle-man or gateway. People can get basic information using this site, but anything more in-depth and they’re going to be directed to the review site itself.

That makes this type of site good for the person who isn’t going to conduct a thorough search when finding a new chiropractor, but wants to just get “a feel” for who you are and what people think of your services.

Setting up a business page on Yahoo! Local appears to be fairly simple too. Just pick between the free basic listing which enables you to include your phone, address, website, hours, products, and services or you can pay for an enhanced listing and add your logo and tagline, up to 10 photos, and a detailed business description.

YouTube

YouTube is a video based social media site that is video-based, reportedly entertaining people for “hundreds of millions of hours” each and every day. Perhaps the most notable thing about this platform is that it can help you better connect with people between the ages of 18 and 49 since this is the primary demographic using this site.

Now, you may be wondering what videos have to do with reviews, and the answer is a lot. By creating your own YouTube channel, you’ll have just one more place that potential patients can go to find you and see comments others have left about your chiropractic practice. Additionally, if you have a lot of subscribers or lots of “thumbs ups,” this helps provide social proof that you’re probably someone worth doing business with.

Dexknows

When you go to Dexknows, it looks very similar to the other online review sites in that it provides the same basic information about your business and customer reviews. The only real difference is that it allows the user to filter the search by best matches, rating, distance, and whether you’re “open now.”

The reviews are pretty much the same too in that they’re based on a 5-star system and include a comment section where people can write out their thoughts and explain why they gave the rating they did.

To get your practice listed on dexknows, simply go to their About page and click on the link.

Superpages

Superpages is number seven on Moz’s list and it is a lot like the other online review pages but it also provides the customer with a lot more information. For instance, it displays your:

Payment options
Certifications and affiliations
Whether you’re licensed and insured
The type of customers you want (such as residential, commercial, or industrial)
Whether you offer emergency services
The languages you speak
And whether you’re locally owned

This enables potential patients to get more information about you while also learning more about how your customers feel about doing business with you.

The reviews are also 5-star based and include comment sections. And, like on some of the other review sites, people are able to click on the individual reviews to tag them as either helpful or not helpful, making it easier for the next person to determine whether they should read that particular commentary or not.

To access your business on their site, simply claim your listing. If it isn’t listed yet, that same link will enable you to add your business so it’s there for future searches conducted on chiropractors in your area.

Manta

Although Manta is number eight on Moz’s list of top 10 sites for online chiropractic reviews, the one nice thing about this site is that you’re able to put in a tag line of sorts that appears at the top of your business listing right on the initial search page. That makes this a perfect opportunity to highlight any of your specializations, such as if you work with a large number of athletes. It’s also a great spot to say whether you’ve won any awards, adding credibility to your practice.

Another factor that makes this site different than the others is that each individual page looks almost like a website. It has an “About” section where you can write a couple of paragraphs about your practice, a “What We Offer” section where you can list your specific offerings (like holistic medicine or nutrition), and sections where the viewer can easily get directions or view your contact information.

The reviews are listed below these sections and they’re called “Recommendations” instead. Also, they aren’t on a 5-star rating system like the other sites as they’re strictly the person’s written comments about your practice. Makes sense really since they’re all positive and should be high in stars anyway.

To get listed on this site appears to require payment of a monthly fee.

CHIROdirectory.com

CHIROdirectory.com is an online site for the person who is searching for a chiropractor and a chiropractor only. There are no restaurants, hair salons, or multitudes of other businesses like you’ll find on the other sites already mentioned.

Using this site offers many advantages in that the person doing the search can modify the results by search radius, education, technique, and specialty. This is definitely a good site for someone who is familiar with chiropractic and knows exactly what he or she wants.

Another major difference is that it only contains business information, not client reviews. That makes this a better site for the prospective patient who places more emphasis on your education, experience, and specialization than on what your patients have to say about you.

If you’d like to create a listing, they have a page where you can input all of your information for inclusion in their database.

123Chiropractors.com

Like CHIROdirectory, 123chiropractors.com is another site committed to chiropractic providers only. The searcher just picks his or her state and city and is taken to a page with various listings with huge buttons prompting them to call you immediately.

Should they want to know more, they can click on your listing individually and they’re taken to a page where you can list any Internet specials you offer, a description of your practice, your qualifications, insurance and payment methods, as well as techniques you offer.

Again, this site is more directed toward the person who has a better idea of what he or she wants out of a chiropractor…and there aren’t any reviews.

This listing isn’t free as you do have to pay-per-call, so you need to be aware of that.

Additional Sites to Consider

While these are the top 10 sites according to Moz, there are more that you should know about in case people in your area tend to use them when searching for chiropractic providers. They are:

The main thing to remember is that online reviews are a great way for your happy patients to refer you to others, increasing your business using the power of referral marketing.

In the meantime, get your chiropractic business listed on these types of sites and you’re one step closer to helping potential clients realize why they should be doing business with you and only you!

Should you need any help please feel free to reach out. We offer results based N8 Chiropractic Websites, Automated Chiropractic Social Media, Online Review Building, and Chiropractic Online Marketing Plans!

If you would like more information you can schedule a 1-on-1 call at convenient time for you. We are not a pushy sales organization. We’d be happy to simply answer any questions you might have.

Thanks!

The ChiroHosting Team