The amount of Google Reviews your dental practice has and the ratings associated with those reviews can be the deciding factor when a new patient is choosing between your practice and your competitor down the street. 

If you’re trying to attract more patients, it’s crucial that your practice ranks among the top 3 BEST and MOST reviewed dental practice in your area, while always striving for the coveted #1 spot. 

In this article, we get into the top three reasons why Google reviews are an essential tool for increasing your patient flow. 

Gone are the days when people discover a new dental practice by strolling past a window advertisement or a sign on the street. Google reviews are the new storefront and people trust them more than almost any ad copy. 

Google reviews are the first thing people see when searching for dental practices in their area. This means that potential patients are deciding whether they like you, trust you, and want to buy from you before they even click on your website to explore what your dental practice even offers!

For better or worse, Google reviews reflect the honest experiences that patients have had with your practice. The higher the rating and number of reviews, the more potential patients are inclined to trust you.

Think of it this way: If you were to look up dental practices in Toronto and saw one practice with a 4.6 rating and 18 reviews, and then saw another practice with a 4.8 rating with 250 reviews, which practice would you call?

For this reason, it is absolutely critical that your Google reviews provide a great first impression of your practice.

The positions where your practice ranks in Google’s search results aren’t randomly assigned. Google’s algorithm ranks search results by trustworthiness to provide its users with the most relevant results. Naturally, the algorithm favors results with larger numbers of positive reviews.

If your practice doesn’t have many reviews or bad reviews, Google will push it further down the page. On the other hand, the more great reviews the dental practice has, the more Google will trust the business and the higher it will move up in the search results. 

So, if you want your practice to be seen online, you need to prove to Google that you are trustworthy. Google reviews are the most effective way to do that.

Sometimes a series of good Google reviews are all a person needs to decide that they trust your business enough to pick up the phone and call. 

If your practice has the most positive Google reviews in your area, patients will often decide to call your office from those reviews alone. 

If your practice doesn’t have a ton of great reviews or is sitting at a low rating, patients aren’t going to give you the benefit of the doubt, or simply assume that your practice is the best-kept secret in the area.

After years of marketing dental practices, we know from experience that effective marketing starts with collecting Google reviews. Encourage your staff to assist you! Tell friends and family to leave you a quick five-star review and ask them to spread the word. 

Google reviews are the new storefront of your business and have the best success rate at bringing new patient leads to dental practices. 

Need help coming up with a marketing strategy for your practice? Contact RevUp Dental today for help reaching new patients and increasing traffic to your practice’s website. Happy reviewing!