How Do Healthcare Reviews Help with SEO?

Consumer behavior is changing — and in the healthcare industry, patients are bridging their consumer buying journey with their healthcare decision-making process. We're quickly learning how much patients rely on reviews when choosing care.

Approximately 90% of patients read reviews to evaluate providers, and 69% of patients will not even consider a healthcare provider with less than a 4.0 average star rating. And this is patient-driven behavior: healthcare specifically experienced an almost 200% increase in total reviews left per location from 2019 to 2022.

But while those stats show why reviews are important to the patient journey, you may not know that your reviews can also help you rank higher in search — and make a substantial impact on your organic website traffic. Here's how.

To fully comprehend the true role that reviews play in your search strategy, you need to understand the different types of answers your consumers see in search results — objective versus subjective answers.

Often, people are asking questions that have objective answers, like the address of a practice or what kinds of insurance you accept. When it comes to these essential facts about your services, people, and places, you are the expert. You can and should be in control of these facts everywhere they appear, delivering accurate answers at every stage of the consumer search experience.

But sometimes, patients want to hear other patients' feedback — which means they're looking for subjective answers. These subjective answers can include opinions, reviews, and recommendations.

Google reports an 80% increase in mobile searches including the phrase "should I" over a two year period. So when users make searches like "should I try Dr. Smith's practice" or "best primary care physician near me," search engines draw on your ratings and reviews to help you rank in those local search results.

This is because Google uses something called "local justifications" in the local map pack. This includes website justifications – your first-party information found on your healthcare website – as well as review justifications. Review justifications are usually pulled from third-party sites like Google reviews and Yelp, but they could also be patient reviews you feature on your website. Google uses keywords pulled from the review content that match keywords used in a search query. (Learn more on local SEO here.)

Organizations can't (and shouldn't) control what patients write in their reviews. Most review sites have guidelines in place to ensure that review content remains as subjective as possible.

That said, you can influence the subjective answers people find with effective reputation management by encouraging, monitoring, and responding to reviews across digital properties — and by taking action on negative reviews to ensure consistency and quality throughout the consumer experience. In healthcare, an SEO best practice is to manage the reviews patients leave regarding your medical professionals, healthcare practice, service lines, and more.

So, monitor and analyze the feedback people are already leaving for you around the web. Your patients are telling you how to create a great experience — you just have to listen. Respond to their feedback about your services, your healthcare professionals, and more, and make changes as you can. All the while, encourage patients to continue leaving reviews so that you have recent ratings for search engines to draw upon.

Remember, a great experience creates natural brand advocates. Ratings are a reflection of what you're already doing, and they amplify your existing reputation publicly. Be sure to measure your online reputation over time to understand how managing reviews impacts your search visibility and your reputation.

Subjective reviews shape consumer's perception of your organization — and impact their decision to visit you. But reviews can also affect whether your business shows up in search results at all.

Search engines like Google often pre-filter results for searches including terms like "best" (like "best ENT near me"), and will only show results for businesses, organizations, or professionals with a 4-star rating or above.

Similarly, when you ask Alexa or Siri for a recommendation for "best" anything, it's reviews that inform how they surface the "best" answer.

Wondering what extra steps your healthcare organization can take to ethically build positive reviews? For best results, we recommend following these healthcare reputation management best practices.