Ep. 77: How to Get Tons of Online Reviews for Your Dental Practice!
Most dentists would love to have more positive online reviews, but many don’t know where to start, or how to create a plan for getting them consistently. As part of your Marketing efforts, having lots of online reviews do much more than just look good for your practice. They also affect how well your Marketing works. In this week’s episode, Jeff is joined by Dan Brown, MGE’s resident “Dental Marketing Guru,” to go over not only how to get tons of online reviews, but also how these reviews impact your marketing campaigns and SEO.
Topics:
2:40 – How important are online reviews?
7:38 – Do you really want a 5 star rating? And how many reviews should you have?
10:52 – How online reviews affect your SEO.
16:09 – How to get more online reviews.
26:10 – The financial value of online reviews.
Links:
The MGE New Patient Workshop - https://www.newpatients.net/
DDS Success - https://ddssuccess.com/
Learn more about MGE - https://mgeonline.com/
Dan Brown’s email – danb@mgeonline.com
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Questions From This Episode
What percentage of consumers actually rely on reviews before making a purchase, and why does that matter for dentistry?
About 88 percent of people use online reviews somewhere in their purchasing decision once a purchase feels significant enough to think about, which most dental treatment genuinely is. Practices consistently underestimate how many prospective patients are quietly screening them through reviews before ever calling, since most doctors only hear about it from the rare patient who mentions it out loud.
Is a perfect 5-star rating actually the best rating to have?
No. About a third of consumers find a flawless 5-star rating hard to trust unless the practice also has 150 or more total reviews to back it up, since a perfect score with few reviews tends to read as manufactured. A 4.9 rating is considered ideal, 4.7 is the acceptable floor for a dental practice, and anything below that starts to hurt rather than help.
What are the four review-related factors Google actually uses to rank a practice organically?
Total number of reviews, overall star rating, how frequently new reviews come in, and whether the practice actually responds to the reviews it receives. Review frequency carries particularly heavy weight, a practice that won a review push once and then went quiet signals to Google that it was good in the past but isn't staying consistent, which actively hurts organic ranking over time.
What's the actual system for getting a patient to leave a review while they're still in the office?
Ask a warm-up question first, something like what do we do differently than other practices you've been to, then ask if they'd be willing to share those same words in a two-minute online review right there in the chair, ideally with a QR code linking straight to the practice's Google profile and a quick photo to attach. Framing it as a friendly team goal, like earning a group reward for hitting a review target that week, tends to land well without feeling like a direct, individual ask.
Can practices legally offer a reward for leaving a review, and does that vary by location?
A raffle-style incentive, where leaving a review earns an entry into a drawing rather than a guaranteed reward, is generally fine since it isn't direct payment for a specific review, but this varies by jurisdiction. California and Canada specifically prohibit this kind of incentive entirely, while a purely internal team goal, like earning a reward for hitting a review count that week, is fine everywhere since the patient receives nothing themselves for participating.
Episode Transcript
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Jeff: Take a minute and think about your own behavior as a consumer, specifically how you react to marketing and what actually makes you decide to buy. Maybe it's a billboard, a postcard mailer for a window cleaning or tree service company, an ad on Facebook or Instagram, or something you Googled. Whatever it was, it grabbed your attention and made you want to find out more, score one for the marketing. But what do you do next?
Jeff: If you're like most people, you visit the website, scan a QR code, type in the URL, or click the ad. Assuming you're still interested, the website's done its job. What happens after that? You want to know what other people think, social proof. You check Google or Yelp or Facebook to see what others are saying. And no matter how good the marketing was or how beautiful the website looked, reviews carry serious weight in whether you actually move forward. Good reviews and you proceed, bad reviews and you have second thoughts, or it confirms your suspicion that the whole thing was a scam. Even a personal referral doesn't fully override this, the overall rating still shapes the decision.
Jeff: So the question is, how do you get a ton of great reviews and keep generating more consistently, at a level that actually supports your marketing and growth? That's what we're covering this week, how to get a ton of online reviews. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host, joined this week by Dan Brown, a senior consultant here at MGE and co-owner of Blumberg Digital, a digital SEO and marketing agency. If you've listened for a while, you may remember Dan from a couple of earlier episodes on some genuinely hot marketing topics. He's our marketing specialist here, an expert across social media, SEO, pay-per-click, social proof, and public relations.
Jeff: Dan, you're all hooked up?
Dan: I think we're all good.
Jeff: Great, let's jump in. I'll start with what might sound like an obvious question, but you know this far better than I do. Statistically, what's the actual impact of reviews on a purchasing decision?
Dan: Great question. The current figure is that 88 percent of people use online reviews somewhere in their purchasing process, once a purchase feels significant enough to actually think about. And what counts as significant varies by income and circumstance, but think about it yourself, if it's 15 dollars, maybe you're not thinking hard about it. If it's 30, or 3,000, that changes. Once a purchase reaches the point where someone's actually weighing it, 88 percent are reading reviews first, because people don't fully trust businesses anymore. They've been burned before, marketing looked great, and then the product either didn't show up or wasn't what was advertised.
Jeff: It's interesting, even something like buying a supplement, I'll look at purity claims, sure, but I'm also just looking at how it's reviewed, even though it's not expensive.
Dan: Exactly, cost isn't even the main factor at that point. I run seminars where I ask people to take off their dental marketing hat for a second and just think as a consumer. When you're on Amazon, how many of you feel reviews are as important, or more important, than the product description itself? Every hand in the room goes up, because anyone can write anything in a product description, but reviews feel like the real information.
Jeff: Right, because anybody can claim anything about their own product.
Dan: Exactly, and after all the time practices spend perfecting website copy, and that time is genuinely well spent, not putting equal weight on building reviews is a massive omission.
Jeff: This is exactly the trap people fall into marketing their own business, you stop thinking like a consumer yourself. You imagine someone sees your postcard and just calls, without checking you out online first. But of course they will, that's exactly what you'd do too.
Dan: Right, and here's something else I ask at seminars: raise your hand if a patient has ever mentioned reading your online reviews before coming in. In a room of 200 dentists, maybe one or two hands go up. Practices know reviews matter in theory, but they have no real sense of how many prospective patients are quietly screening them this way before ever calling.
Jeff: So clearly 88 percent matters. Now, what actually matters most within that? Is it the overall rating, the number of reviews, can you have too few, and how does this affect SEO specifically? I probably should've broken that into four separate questions, but there it is.
Dan: All great questions, and the honest answer depends on circumstances, but here are solid rule-of-thumb answers. On ratings specifically: about a third of consumers actually find a perfect 5-star rating hard to trust, unless the practice also has 150 or more total reviews to back it up.
Jeff: Interesting, I had the same instinct, that a perfect five stars alone tends to read as though someone paid for it.
Dan: Exactly right. Once you cross 150 real reviews, that 5-star rating becomes genuinely credible instead. But the actual ideal isn't five stars, it's 4.9. For a dental practice specifically, you never want to drop below 4.7.
Jeff: So 4.9 is where I want to live, 4.8 is fine, 4.7 is the edge, and 150 reviews is the minimum.
Dan: Right, with one caveat: that 150 minimum depends on your local competition. If every other practice nearby is sitting at 350, 500, 750 reviews, 150 isn't going to cut it. The best move is searching dentist in your city or zip code, or the relevant specialty if you're a periodontist, endodontist, or orthodontist, and actually scrolling through the top 30 or 40 results.
Dan: This is where it gets genuinely interesting, and it's exactly what we teach at the New Patient Workshop. Say the highest review count in your area is 550, and you're sitting at 60. Now you turn this into a genuine team game, to not just catch up, but to become the highest-rated practice in the area by a wide margin, sometimes double the next closest competitor. We see this constantly with clients, they'll tell us they're not just the highest rated locally, they're outnumbering the next closest practice by two or three times.
Jeff: That's wild.
Dan: One client made a video celebrating being the highest-rated dental practice in Queens, genuinely tough market, using this exact system, and they had the most total reviews too.
Jeff: So bottom line, 150 is the floor, but that doesn't mean give up if you're not there yet.
Dan: Right, if you're sitting at five reviews, we'll show you exactly what to do about that today.
Jeff: Now, from an SEO angle specifically, since I know you've touched on this in recent lectures, what is Google actually looking at?
Dan: There are 220 total ranking criteria Google uses to determine organic placement, meaning anything that isn't a paid ad. About one in eleven people click a paid ad, the other ten scroll down looking for an organic result.
Jeff: Can you repeat that specifically, since I want it to really land? If I search dentist near me and the first two or three results say sponsored, one out of eleven people click those.
Dan: That's right, and the remaining ten click whatever shows up naturally below that, the organic results.
Jeff: So that's genuinely huge, ten out of eleven people are looking past the ads entirely.
Dan: Completely, ads absolutely still work, roughly 10 percent of traffic, but you're missing out on the other ten out of eleven if organic ranking isn't solid. Of those 220 total ranking factors, four specifically relate to your Google reviews: total number of reviews, your star rating, how frequently new reviews come in, and, just recently added, whether you're actually responding to the reviews you receive.
Jeff: Interesting, which of those four carries the most weight?
Dan: Review frequency, by far, and it's the one people think about least. Say you played the review game, hit 600, and everyone relaxed afterward, reviews slow to a trickle. That actually hurts you, it tells Google you were good in the past but aren't staying consistent now.
Jeff: So Google isn't sending someone out to evaluate you personally, it's reading the pattern through algorithms.
Dan: Exactly, if-this-then-that logic. Consistent review frequency tells Google you're still actively good, not just historically good. And responding to reviews, the newest factor, matters because it shows genuine ongoing communication, which reads as good business practice, responding to positive reviews and appropriately handling negative ones, which honestly deserves its own full episode given all the HIPAA considerations specific to healthcare.
Jeff: Agreed, we should do that separately.
Dan: One more piece worth knowing: Google is now indexing the actual text of reviews. So if someone writes, this is the most pain-free dentistry I've ever experienced, I got a dental implant and it changed my life, thank you Dr. Smith, that language becomes part of what surfaces when someone searches pain-free dentistry or dental implant specifically.
Jeff: So the actual words in the review function as search content, not just the star rating.
Dan: Exactly right. So the system we're covering today doesn't just ask for a star rating, it genuinely encourages the patient to be specific and expressive about their experience, not just, great, highly recommend. That's fine, but it leaves real opportunity on the table. Obviously you can't claim you're pain-free as a practice yourself, that's not something you can say clinically, but your patients can say it in their own words.
Jeff: Alright, let's get practical. Say I've got a hundred reviews, fifty reviews, whatever the number, I want more. What do you actually tell me to do?
Dan: The real target for genuine, organic reviews is 10 to 15 a week. When I tell that to New Patient Workshop attendees, half the room looks like they want to be sick, since plenty of practices get maybe 15 reviews in an entire year.
Jeff: But it's genuinely achievable.
Dan: Completely, we see clients do it constantly, and once they do, they'll tell us how many new patients specifically mention choosing them because of their reviews. Ask your own team right now how often patients bring that up unprompted, it'll likely surprise you.
Dan: There are really five things to think through here. First and most important: get the review while the patient is still physically in the practice. Plenty of our clients use software that texts a patient afterward asking for a review, but think about it as a consumer yourself, when you check out at Home Depot or Lowe's and they mention scanning a QR code for a review, you mean to, but by the time you've loaded your car and left the parking lot, you've forgotten entirely.
Jeff: So capture it right then and there, before they leave.
Dan: Exactly. And people sometimes worry, wait, aren't we not supposed to ask for reviews while someone's physically at the business, in case it looks like it's all coming from the same device? That's really about guest WiFi specifically, if a patient's on your practice's WiFi, it can look to Google or Yelp like every review is coming from a single IP address, which can flag it as suspicious. Most people have their own data plan and don't need your WiFi at all, but if you do offer guest WiFi, make sure it's password protected, or simply help a patient turn their WiFi off for a moment if needed.
Jeff: So walk me through the actual conversation. What do I say?
Dan: You can't directly ask someone to leave a positive review, that violates the terms of service for Google and Facebook. But you can absolutely ask for an honest review, the key is prefacing that ask properly, since a lot of doctors specifically feel uncomfortable asking directly and worry it feels pushy. Let's actually run through it. Say you've just finished veneers on me, I've looked in the mirror, I'm thrilled.
Jeff: Let's do it. So, Jeff, how'd everything go today?
Dan: Oh, I love it, it looks fantastic.
Jeff: That's wonderful to hear, that's exactly what we love. I noticed you've been to other practices in the past, but you keep coming back to us, we must be doing something right. Can I ask, what do we do differently or better than other practices you've been to?
Dan: Honestly, I don't know, I just really like the doctor, you guys really seem to get me, and I always feel taken care of here.
Jeff: That's wonderful, we work hard for that. The reason I'm asking is that today, people genuinely want to hear from other patients, not from us talking about ourselves, and that includes new patients trying to choose a dentist. Would you mind taking just two minutes, right here in the chair, and sharing those same kind words in an online review?
Dan: Sure, can we take a selfie too?
Jeff: Absolutely, people love that, and Google, Yelp, and Facebook all favor reviews that include a photo. Let's grab the doctor too.
Dan: So now I've got a photo with the whole team, and I type something like, Doctor so-and-so is amazing, look at this, wish I had a before photo but it looked rough, check this office out.
Dan: Now here's the other version, where the patient's a bit more rushed. Same question: today people want to hear from other patients, not from us, would you mind sharing those same words in an online review?
Jeff: Sure, can you just send me a link? I'll do it when I get home.
Dan: Absolutely, that works. And here's a nice addition: we're actually playing a little game in the office this week, if we hit our review goal by tomorrow, the doctor buys the whole team Starbucks Monday. We're so close, would you help us out, just takes two minutes?
Jeff: That doesn't have to take long, does it?
Dan: Not at all.
Jeff: Okay, I've got a minute, let's do it.
Dan: And patients genuinely love that framing, helping a team that just took great care of them hit a fun, low-stakes goal. What's interesting is that even if the doctor had asked directly, most patients would still say yes, but hearing it's a team goal makes people even more willing to jump in.
Jeff: And notably, you never actually asked for a positive review specifically, or told me what to say. You asked what we do better first, which meant I wasn't sitting there thinking about the procedure itself when you asked, I was already thinking about the relationship.
Dan: Exactly, that's the whole system. And making it fast matters enormously, a QR code right there that jumps straight to your Google profile, snap a photo, done, start to finish in about two minutes.
Jeff: Should that QR code be posted somewhere specific, like a placard on the wall?
Dan: In every operatory, in the consult room, and at reception, laminated and ready to go. Some people worry about posting it visibly in case a dissatisfied patient uses it too, but that patient's welcome to leave a review either way, I'd still post it everywhere for the ease of use.
Jeff: And what kind of team game structure actually works well?
Dan: Survey your own team on what motivates them, sometimes it's Starbucks for hitting a weekly count, sometimes something bigger for a larger milestone. One of our clients runs a weekly goal, hit 25 reviews and the doctor buys lunch Monday, and 25 real reviews a week reflects a genuinely strong, growing patient flow. Bigger milestones, say 100 or 600 reviews, can mean a nicer dinner out or even a group outing. It's genuinely worth investing in your own team this way, the same practices spending real money on Google ads and a proper SEO specialist should absolutely be willing to spend on this too, don't cut corners here.
Dan: Staff are usually a bit shy the first week or two, we actually run role play and drilling on exactly this at the New Patient Workshop, but they find their footing fast, and within a short time you're consistently generating 10 to 15 reviews a week, hitting 150 total quickly, and pulling ahead of every other practice in the area.
Jeff: It's genuinely hard to put a precise value on this, but let's try. If a practice went from 50 reviews to 600 in under a year through this approach, purely from team effort, no direct spend involved, what would you estimate that's actually worth to the business?
Dan: Probably somewhere around 100,000 to 150,000 dollars, in that first year alone.
Jeff: That's remarkable, especially given the actual cost is just a modest team incentive.
Dan: Exactly, well worth it. And once you're the top-rated practice in your area, at 4.9 or even effectively five stars once enough positive reviews wash out the occasional negative one, and your website and Google Business Profile genuinely reflect a warm, welcoming practice, which is usually already true for our clients, everything lines up. New patients notice immediately.
Jeff: Since a lot of our listeners are in Canada or elsewhere outside the US, are there any regional differences worth knowing?
Dan: Yes, California and Canada both restrict this in a specific way. One tactic we normally recommend, that isn't allowed there, is a prize basket at reception, chocolates, an electric toothbrush, gift cards, gourmet coffee, wrapped up with a sign reading, ask how to win me. Patients get entered by leaving a review, or five entries for referring a patient who schedules on the spot, and you draw a name every couple of weeks.
Jeff: So because it's a raffle entry, not a guaranteed reward for a specific review, that gets around the direct-payment restriction most platforms have.
Dan: Exactly, since not everyone who enters actually wins anything. But California and Canada specifically prohibit that kind of incentive altogether, some practices there still do it quietly, but we can't recommend it publicly given the rules.
Jeff: But the internal team game, hit a goal, the doctor buys Starbucks, that's fine everywhere, including Canada?
Dan: Completely fine everywhere, since that's purely internal, the patient receives nothing themselves for participating.
Jeff: What I like about this is how simple it genuinely is. Our own MGE Google Business page is sitting at 1,100 reviews now, plenty of them specifically about the New Patient Workshop and this exact review system.
Dan: Right, and simple is exactly why it holds up. A lot of the fancier third-party review platforms out there have a real flaw, reviews collected through some of those services don't always make it onto Google itself, or you lose them entirely if you stop subscribing. With this approach, you own every one of those reviews permanently, on your own Google profile.
Jeff: This was genuinely great, Dan. If anyone wants to learn more directly from Dan, he's the main speaker at the MGE New Patient Workshop, link on the episode page, and he's also built out a full section on reviews specifically within the Dental Marketing course on DDS Success, going even deeper than we could cover here today.
Dan: That's right, covered in a lot more detail there.
Jeff: Thank you so much, Dan.
Dan: My pleasure.
Jeff: I hope you all enjoyed this one, it's genuinely powerful and something you can start using immediately. If you have marketing questions specifically, you can reach Dan directly at danb@mgeonline.com, link on the episode page. If you have questions about MGE generally, find us online at mgeonline.com or call 800-640-1140. Have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.