Summary of this blog
- Dental practice SEO is the set of local signals that decide whether your practice appears when a patient a few miles away searches for a dentist, an emergency appointment or a treatment. Google’s own help page says local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and prominence.
- The fundamentals get skipped because they are unglamorous. The practice pays for a new website and an ad budget while the profile, the treatment pages, the reviews and the listings are left to whoever has a spare hour.
- Six fundamentals, in order. Find what was skipped, put the profile in the practice’s name, give every treatment its own page, keep reviews flowing and answered, hold one name and one number everywhere, and count new patients every month.
- The outcome is the new-patient call from the map pack, an appointment book filled by patients within a few miles, and the emergency search at nine at night answered by your number.
Dental practice SEO is the work of making your practice the one that appears when a patient nearby searches. The outcome is plain: the new-patient call from the map pack, an appointment book filled by patients within a few miles, and the emergency search at nine at night answered by your number. Our dental practice marketing guide covers the whole appointment book, from the first visit to the recall. This article covers the six local fundamentals that decide whether the practice appears at all when a patient nearby searches.
Google’s help page on improving local ranking says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well the profile and the pages match what the patient typed. Distance is how far she is from the chair. Prominence draws on what Google knows about the practice from across the web, and on the number and rating of its reviews. That page also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. The signals have to be built, and a dental practice SEO plan builds them in order.
The owner of one to five practices rarely skips these on purpose. A website redesign has a launch date and an invoice. An ad budget has a dashboard. The profile category, the treatment pages, the reply to last week’s review and the old number still listed in a directory have none of those. They wait for a spare hour that never comes. Dental practice SEO is mostly the unglamorous work of doing them anyway, and the practices that do take the calls.
This guide is written for the owner of a dental practice in the US or the UK with one to five sites. Our pillar on health and wellness marketing covers the wider plan these dental practice SEO fundamentals sit inside. What follows is what each one looks like when it is done well, what it changes in the appointment book, and what skipping it costs.
Dental practice SEO is decided by unglamorous signals: the profile in the practice’s name, a page per treatment, reviews that are answered and one number everywhere. The practice that gets them right takes the nearby patient’s call.
The nine o’clock test
Open your phone tonight at nine and search for “emergency dentist” with the name of your town. Note which three practices appear in the map pack and whether yours is one of them. Then tap the first one and see whether its number rings a person or a voicemail. A practice with its dental practice SEO in order appears in the pack, shows its hours, and lists a number that reception answers in the morning. A practice that has skipped the fundamentals appears nowhere, or appears with the wrong category, a number from three years ago and a last review nobody answered. One search, four minutes, and the owner knows which patients she is losing tonight.
1. Why the dental practice SEO fundamentals get skipped
The fundamentals get skipped because nothing forces them. A website has a designer chasing sign-off. An ad campaign has a monthly bill someone has to approve. The profile, the treatment pages, the reviews and the listings belong to nobody, so they sit at the bottom of the practice manager’s list under the recalls and the rota. Meanwhile Google’s three measures judge the practice every day. Relevance reads the profile and the pages. Distance is fixed by the address. Prominence counts the reviews, the replies and every mention of the practice across the web. A dental practice SEO plan starts by giving each signal an owner and a date, so the website and the ads are built on signals that work.
What good looks like: the practice that is found before it advertises
Picture a two-site practice in a mid-sized town. Its profile says Dentist, lists the hours and the treatments in the words patients use, and links to a page for each site. Each treatment has a page that names the town. The newest review is from this week and carries a reply signed by the practice manager. The same name and number appear everywhere a patient might look. That practice appears in the map pack for the searches it cares about and takes the call before the ads switch on. What changes is the cost of a new patient, because a call from the pack costs nothing per click. The dental practice SEO fundamentals turn the ad budget into a top-up.
What skipping costs this quarter
Count the new patients who came from the ads last month and divide the ad spend by that number. Then count the ones who found you on Google or on the map. The second group costs nothing per call, and the fundamentals decide how large it is. A practice that skips them pays the first number for every new patient, and that number rises each time a competitor fixes its profile. At Healthora, we have seen that the practices which skip these fundamentals are usually the ones spending the most on ads to make up for them. Dental practice SEO reverses the ratio over a quarter. The calls the ads no longer have to buy are the saving.
2. The profile in the practice’s name
The first fundamental is a Google Business Profile that says who you are. Google’s guidelines for representing your business say the name on the profile must match the real-world name on the signage, the website and the stationery, with no taglines or extra words added. The same guidelines ask for a phone number that connects to the individual location, and a local number rather than a central helpline whenever possible. For a dental practice that means the primary category Dentist, the practice’s name as it appears on the door, the hours the door is open, and the number that rings reception. Dental practice SEO begins with that profile, because the map pack is built from it.
What good looks like: the profile reception would recognise
On a good profile the practice’s name reads exactly as the sign above the door. The category is Dentist, with the services written in the patient’s words: emergency appointments, check-ups, whitening, implants, children’s dentistry. Opening hours match the door, including the early Tuesday and the Saturday morning. Photographs show the reception and the team. The website link opens the page for that site, and the number rings a desk that answers. Our guide to Google Business Profile for clinics covers the setup field by field. The two sentences here are why it comes first in any dental practice SEO plan. What changes is the patient who taps the card and reaches a person before she reads another word.
The signage test
Stand outside the practice and read the sign. Then open the profile on your phone and read the name. If the two differ by a word, a town or a tagline, a patient comparing them wonders whether she has the right place. Then ring the number and see who answers. Good looks like the receptionist picking up with the practice’s name. A central line, a voicemail or a number from a practice you sold is a fundamental skipped. A dental practice SEO audit runs this check on every site in ten minutes. Owners with several practices tend to find a profile nobody owns, because the agency that set it up has moved on.
3. One page per treatment and one for the practice
The second fundamental is relevance, which lives on the website. Patients type a treatment and a place: emergency dentist plus the town, teeth whitening plus the town, dental implants plus the town. A single services page listing twenty treatments matches none of those searches well. One page per treatment, each with the town in its heading, matches all of them. Alongside them sits one page for the practice, with the address, the team, the parking and the hours. Our guide to health clinic landing pages covers the page a patient books from. In dental practice SEO terms, the treatment page is the landing page, and the town in its heading ties it to the map.
A worked example: the website that earned the bookings
At Healthora, we have seen a dental clinic grow bookings by 20% after a rebrand and website optimisation. Good looks like this. Each treatment has its own page, headed with the treatment and the town, saying who it suits, what the first visit involves, and answering the price question plainly. Three recent reviews sit beside a booking button that opens the diary. A specialist checks every claim and image before it goes live, because a treatment page touches a patient’s care. This article is marketing guidance and never medical advice. What changes is the patient who searched for one treatment landing on a page about it, with a way to book. That is dental practice SEO doing its second job.
The twenty-treatment test
Count the treatments on your services page. Then count how many have a page of their own with the town in the heading. A practice with twelve treatments and one page has eleven searches it cannot win. Good looks like a page for every treatment the practice wants more of, and none for the ones it would rather refer. Emergency appointments deserve their own page above all, because that patient is in pain and rings the first practice that can see her. A dental practice SEO plan writes those pages in the order of the appointment book, highest-value treatment first. What changes is which searches the practice can appear for, and so which patients it wins without paying per click.
A specialist’s view on your fundamentals
Want to know which dental practice SEO fundamentals your practice has skipped?
A practice that skipped two of the six is paying for every new patient it could have had for nothing. The nine o’clock test shows it in four minutes. Want more patients finding you locally? Book a free growth consultation. We will run the test on your practice, check the profile against the sign above your door and count the treatment pages you are missing. Then we will set out the dental practice SEO fundamentals to fix, in order, with the one that frees the most calls first. You keep the list whether you decide to work with us or not. Healthora specialises in health.
Book a free growth consultation4. Reviews: a steady flow, every one answered
The third fundamental is prominence, and for a dental practice most of it comes from reviews. Google’s local ranking page says the number and rating of reviews feed prominence, and replying to reviews is one of the things Google tells businesses to do. The patient reads them before she rings. Pew Research Center’s 2016 report on online reviews found that 82% of US adults at least sometimes read online reviews before buying something for the first time, and 40% always or almost always do. A first visit to a dentist is that kind of first purchase. Dental practice SEO treats the review feed as a signal to be kept flowing and answered, never a box ticked at the start.
What good looks like: this week’s review, answered by Friday
The newest review on the profile is from this week. Each one has a reply within days, signed by a person, short, specific and silent on the treatment. Critical reviews get a calm reply, an apology where due, and a name and number to take the conversation offline. Where a reply could touch a patient’s care, a specialist drafts it to protect the patient and the practice. Our guide to patient reviews covers both. At Healthora, we have seen that practices which answer every review, including the critical ones, tend to earn more enquiries than practices with a higher rating and silence beneath it. What changes is a dental practice SEO signal that keeps rising each week.
The last-review test
Sort your reviews by newest and read the date on the top one. Then sort by lowest and look for a reply under the top one. Good looks like a review from the last fortnight at the top of the first sort and a calm, signed reply under the second. A practice whose newest review is from last winter has stopped asking. A practice whose lowest review sits unanswered has told every reader what to expect when something goes wrong. Both are fixed by a steady ask after the appointment and a reply desk that works weekly. A dental practice SEO plan sets both up and checks them every Monday, so the flow never stops when the practice gets busy.
5. One name, one address, one number everywhere
The fourth fundamental is the record of the practice that lives outside your own website: the profile, the map apps, the insurer directories and the handful of listings patients in your town use. Google’s local ranking page says prominence draws on information Google has about a business from across the web, including directories, so each listing is a vote. A vote with the wrong number or an old address is a vote against. Dental practice SEO holds one name, one address and one number across every listing that matters, and ignores the hundreds that send nobody. Google’s guidelines also ask for consistent names and categories across all of a business’s locations.
What good looks like: the same record on every listing
The practice’s name, address, number and hours read the same on the profile, on the website footer, on the map apps, on the insurer’s directory and on the two or three local directories patients open. The old number from the practice you bought three years ago has been corrected everywhere it appeared. Each listing links to the right page on the website, and that page links back. Our guide to clinic directories and citations covers which listings matter and which waste a morning. In two sentences: a listing matters when a patient might find you on it, and wastes a morning when only a crawler reads it. A dental practice SEO plan spends its listing time on the first kind.
The wrong-number test
Search your practice’s name with the word dentist and open the first ten results beyond your own website. Write down the number and the address each one shows. Good looks like ten identical records. Most practices find three numbers, two addresses and an opening time from before the Saturday clinic started. Each mismatch costs twice: once in prominence, because Google is less sure which record is true, and once in the patient who rings the old number and gives up. Owners with two practices find the problem doubled, one site’s number against the other’s address. A dental practice SEO audit lists every mismatch in a morning, and the fix is one change on each listing that matters.
6. What dental practice SEO changes in 90 days
A plan for the next 90 days contains the following. A profile in the practice’s name, with the category Dentist, the hours and the number that rings reception. One page per treatment, each carrying the town, written in the order of the appointment book. A review ask after every appointment and a reply desk that works every week. One record across every listing that matters. And a monthly report of new-patient calls, bookings and cost per new patient. That is dental practice SEO as an owner needs to understand it. We call the set the Six Fundamentals, and a specialist builds all of them at once. Our services page describes what the plan contains and what the practice keeps.
What day 90 looks like
By day 90 the practice appears in the map pack for the searches it cares about, with a rating a patient trusts. The emergency search at nine at night finds the practice’s page, which says it can see her tomorrow morning, and the number she rings is answered at eight. Each treatment the practice wants more of has a page that is found for it. Reviews arrive weekly and every one has a reply. The report shows how many new patients came from the pack and how many from the ads. Dental practice SEO done by a specialist reaches that picture in a quarter. Done in spare hours between patients, it tends to take a year.
What the skipped fundamentals cost
The cost looks like this. A profile with the wrong category appears for the wrong searches or none. A single services page loses eleven treatment searches to the practice across town with eleven pages. An unanswered complaint at the top of the lowest sort turns away the readers Pew counted. An old number in three directories sends patients to voicemail. Each is a patient who searched nearby and booked elsewhere, and the owner never sees the search. The ads then buy back a share at full price. Our guide to wellness website conversion covers the leaks after she arrives. Dental practice SEO stops the leaks before she arrives, and the saving shows as calls the practice no longer pays for.
Dental practice SEO in practice: what a plan contains
Dental practice SEO in practice begins with the nine o’clock test. Then comes an audit of the profile, the website, the review feed and every listing the practice appears on. The audit says which fundamentals were skipped and which one is costing the most calls. Next, the profile is corrected and claimed, the treatment pages are written in the order of the appointment book, the review ask and the reply desk are set up, and the listings are brought to one record. The monthly report counts new-patient calls, bookings and cost per new patient. A single-site practice and a five-site group get the same six fundamentals. What differs is the order, and which site goes first.
The six fundamentals, in order
- Find what was skipped. The nine o’clock test and an audit of the profile, the pages, the reviews and the listings, so the fix starts with the fundamental costing the most calls.
- Put the profile in the practice’s name. The name as on the sign, the category Dentist, the hours as on the door and the number that rings reception: the first dental practice SEO fundamental.
- Give every treatment its own page. One page per treatment with the town in its heading, and one page for the practice, written highest-value treatment first: the dental practice SEO page a patient books from.
- Keep reviews flowing and answered. An ask after every appointment and a reply desk that works every week, with critical reviews taken offline by a person.
- Hold one record everywhere. One name, one address and one number on every listing that matters, and no morning spent on the ones that send nobody: the dental practice SEO signal most practices skip.
- Count new patients every month. Calls from the pack, bookings and cost per new patient on one sheet, so the owner sees what the dental practice SEO fundamentals changed.
Why a specialist gets there faster
The six dental practice SEO fundamentals can be fixed by the practice manager, by a specialist, or both. The difference is time and order. A specialist has audited enough practices to know which fundamental is costing the calls before the test is finished, and fixes all six side by side while the owner sees patients. Our services and case studies show what the work looks like in engagements we have run.
A specialist in health understands that the patient searching nearby is choosing someone to trust with her teeth, often in pain and often at night. She rings the practice that appears, says what she needs and answers. Put the profile in the practice’s name, give every treatment its page, keep the reviews flowing and answered, hold one record everywhere and count what changed. Then dental practice SEO is the reason the next new patient rings you.
Ready to be the practice the nearby patient rings?
HEALTHORA SPECIALISES IN HEALTH
A skipped fundamental costs a call a day, and the owner never sees the search. The plan to change that fits on a page. Want more patients finding you locally? Book a free growth consultation. We will run the nine o’clock test on your practice and show you which of the six fundamentals were skipped and which is costing the most. Then we will set out the dental practice SEO fixes in order, the one that frees the most calls first. You leave with fixes you can apply immediately, whether you decide to work with us or not. Forty minutes, no pitch.
Book a free growth consultationFrequently asked questions
What is dental practice SEO?
The work of making a dental practice the one that appears when a patient nearby searches for a dentist, an emergency appointment or a treatment. Google ranks local results mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. The fundamentals are a profile in the practice’s name, one page per treatment, a steady flow of answered reviews, one record on every listing that matters and a monthly count of new patients. The aim of dental practice SEO is the new-patient call from the map pack rather than from the ad.
Why does my practice not appear in the map pack?
Usually because one or more fundamentals were skipped. The profile may carry the wrong category, a tagline in the name or a number that rings a central line. A website may have one services page where it needs a page per treatment. The newest review may be months old, or the lowest may sit unanswered. Listings may show three different numbers. A dental practice SEO audit finds which, and the fix starts with the one costing the most calls.
Does a dental practice need a page for every treatment?
A dental practice SEO plan writes a page for every treatment the practice wants more of, each with the town in its heading. Patients type a treatment and a place, and a single services page matches none of those searches well. Emergency appointments deserve their own page above all, because that patient rings the first practice that says it can see her today. A specialist checks every claim and image before a treatment page goes live.
How many reviews does a dental practice need?
A steady flow matters more than a total. Pew Research Center’s 2016 report found that 82% of US adults at least sometimes read online reviews before buying something for the first time, and the newest reviews and the replies are what they read. A practice whose newest review is from last winter has stopped asking. Dental practice SEO sets up an ask after every appointment and a reply desk that works every week, so the signal keeps rising.
Does a dental practice with two sites need two profiles?
Yes. Dental practice SEO for a group gives each site its own Google Business Profile with its own address, its own hours and a local number that rings that reception. Google’s guidelines ask for consistent names and categories across every location. Each profile links to a page for that site, and that page links back. One profile standing for two doors loses the search in one of the towns.
How long does dental practice SEO take to bring new patients?
A dental practice SEO plan is usually written for 90 days. The profile and the listings tend to show results first, because they decide whether the practice appears at all. Treatment pages and the review flow build over the following months. Watch new-patient calls, bookings and cost per new patient on the monthly sheet rather than a position on its own.
What does dental practice SEO cost with Healthora?
Fees depend on scope. A single practice with a working website needs a different plan from a five-site group with one services page and three phone numbers in the directories. The scope is set after the free growth consultation, which includes the nine o’clock test and the list of fundamentals to fix in order, whether or not you work with us. Healthora specialises in health.
Keep reading
The six dental practice SEO fundamentals above apply to any practice with an address. The guides below cover the private clinic competing on trust, the words on a clinic website once the patient arrives, and search for the wider health and wellness sector.