Hey, what’s up everybody? This is Dr. Nick with LVRG media, and today I want to talk to you about the five things that you need to keep in mind with your chiropractic reviews that will allow you to dominate your map pack.
How Chiropractors Can Rank First In Local Map Pack Results
So what I mean by map pack is when somebody does a search for chiropractor city, state or chiropractor near me that map with three organic listings is what I refer to as the map pack. So, reviews are probably the thing that most chiropractors focus the most on when it comes to their Google business profile. It’s also a really important signal when it comes to who’s going to rank higher in that map pack.
So it’s not the end all be all. And people get mad sometimes. I’ll be on a strategy session with them, and they’ll be like, “Well, I’ve had 200 reviews and this office with only 20 reviews keeps getting in front of me and blah, blah, blah.” So there’s lots of different signals that that matter when it comes to who’s ranking you know, in that top three. In that top three is really important because very few people are going to click on the more places and go try to find you, you know, in the hundreds of other chiropractors that might be listed.
So it’s really important for you to show up in that top three. And reviews are really important because that’s the one objective thing that people have to judge one office over the other. So when you think about like the the organic URLs or the Google ads at the top, everything’s kind of the same, like there’s not that much you can do to make them really stand out. But in the Google My Business listing or Google Business Profile listings, the reviews are the one thing that people can kind of use to pick and choose who they’re going to at least check out first. They may not, it may not be the deciding factor, but they may read the reviews they may visit your website before they try someone else.
Google Business Profile Review Guidelines For Chiropractors
So there are five things that really matter when it comes to Google’s algorithm and your reviews. So total number obviously is important. If you’ve got you know, 1000 reviews and somebody else has 100 reviews. That’s going to be a pretty strong signal to Google that you are more prominent and relevant than the person with a hundred. Average star rating: obviously, if you’ve got a 4.9 and somebody else has a 4.1 you’re going to be more likely to rank ahead of them.
Now anybody that has under a 4.9 I am of the belief that I think 4.8 is kind of like a no man’s land. 4.7 and below, it causes people to wonder what the bad reviews are like when you have a 4.9 or a 5 they just assume all the reviews are good. 4.8 I don’t think it’s low enough to like really trigger that in somebody’s mind. But 4.7 and below you really start to it’s easy to go into someone’s reviews and click lowest and it’ll give you all the one star two star reviews.
So you don’t want to like encourage people to go check out your bad reviews. You want them to just kind of like click on the reviews and read all the nice things that people will have to say about you. Also the more reviews that you have, the less susceptible you are to a low reviews starting to pull down your average ranking. So total number average star rating those are obvious. I think that’s what everybody kind of thinks in their mind is where this ends.
There are three other factors that have become more and more important recently. So the third one is recency. So how new are the reviews like if you have 1000 reviews, but you haven’t gotten a review in two years? That person with 100 reviews that might be getting a review every day and they’re starting to kind of slowly chip away. That person is going to have a better recency profile as well as the fourth factor which is going to be velocity.
So velocity is how often are you getting them? Recency is how new or the majority of like how many have you gotten in the last 30, 60, 90 days? So a lot of times when people get a big lead on somebody in their community, I’ll see that they will kind of rest on their laurels and those be like well, you know, like I’ve gotten 200, and nobody else has 50 so I’m fine. Well, you want to continue because hey at some point somebody’s gonna figure it out and start getting more reviews. But also you want to make sure that you’ve got that recency and that velocity in your reviews.
Google Business Profile Review Tips For Chiropractors
And then fifth and probably one of the things that allows you to show up for the for the keywords that you really care about and for the types of patients and the conditions that you want to help is going to be the quality of the reviews. So like somebody who just leaves a five star review with no words, it’s like, does that help you on all the other four factors? Yes, but it doesn’t help you on the quality side. So let’s take that 1000 review person versus the 100 reviews. If 1000 of these reviews, were all just five star with no words. And the 100 review person had 100 reviews that were you know, three, four or five paragraphs of people just like going on and on about how great the doctor was. That is going to be a factor in Google’s mind. It will also be a factor when people click on the reviews themselves.
So that’s going to be more of an interaction factor. So when somebody clicks on it if they’re spending more time reading through your reviews, Google knows all these signals that knows what’s going on. So the more likely they are to read those reviews, the more reviews the more likely to Google is to show up. Which means you’re going to show up in the map pack more.
So don’t think that just because you have the most or that you’re always going to rank number one. And don’t think that if you’re not at number one, that you can’t rank in that top three. Reviews are not only a great way for people to like decide who they’re going to choose to call first. But it also gives people kind of a window into what the practice is all about from a third party, not just yourself.
So we hear in our practice, way more often that people you know, read our reviews and they tell us oh I read your website and it was so great. The reviews are what really make a difference in people’s minds. But those five factors are going to make a difference in terms of like actually getting them in front of some eyeballs. So hopefully that helps you know keep getting reviews. Be consistent with it, get quality reviews, and hopefully you will rank number one for all the searches that you want.
