LAS VEGAS – Enhancing your online reputation is a tricky business, an industry that Robert Baxter said attracts a lot of sharks.
"A lot of people in this field are not very good at what they do," Mr. Baxter said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. "They’re going to take your money and promise things they can’t deliver. Be careful."
Robert Baxter
It can also be expensive, especially when it comes to repairing your reputation. That part of the business "is so expensive that I personally stay out of it," said Mr. Baxter, a Miami Beach–based consultant who is widely considered a leading expert in physician reputation management.
"If you have a big problem, like a situation with a state medical board or negative appearance on a news station, it could cost $5,000-$10,000 per month for a minimum of 6 months to push the negative items down," he said. "There are no tried and true methods for what you do each time, either. It’s a case by case situation. For a posting on a review site, it helps if you can figure out who that patient is and get an idea of the psychology of how much trouble that person could actually cause."
To have your reputation look good online, Mr. Baxter recommended standardizing, claiming, and optimizing pages about you on the Web, including your Google Places page, your pages on review sites, your own practice website, your YouTube page, and your LinkedIn account. That way, the online information about you appears cohesive, "and you have a better opportunity to rank and control more of your name space," he explained.
What’s more, you should go after the increasing number of mobile visitors because "targeting mobile users is one of the biggest goals for both Apple and Google," Mr. Baxter said.
Another way to enhance your reputation is to enlist the aid of patients who are willing to write a review of your practice on sites such as Yelp.com or RateMDs.com. It helps to have patients post positive reviews and comments on the sites they hold accounts with. "If someone is an active Yelp user, they should post on Yelp, while someone who has a Google Plus account should post on Google," he noted.
According to Mr. Baxter, Google is moving toward the concept of the "semantic web," whereby the search engine works more like the human brain so that it "knows" what you might be looking for. "It’s no longer just about links as it relates to reviews and rankings," commented Mr. Baxter. "It’s about what’s being said about you and what’s written online in general."
To get a sense of your current online reputation, he recommended typing your name and "reviews" into the subject line of the search engine. "That’s going to give you a good representation of what your name space looks like as it relates to your reputation," he said.
Mr. Baxter also advises clients to use marquee phrases. "So if, for instance, you’re a dermatologist in San Diego, you should search for San Diego dermatologist to see both how you are ranking and how your reputation looks alongside your listing," he said. "You should also pay close attention to how your competitors look, because if someone is doing really well with reviews, you want to emulate what they’re doing."
Mr. Baxter said he had no relevant financial conflicts to disclose.