§ 01
SEO by industry · Dentists
SEO for dental practices
“Dentist near me” is searched 823,000 times a month in the US. Almost none of those people scroll past the map pack. The practices that win are not the ones with the best website — they are the ones with a page for every service line and a profile Google trusts enough to show first.
§ 02
What your customers actually type
US monthly searches, what a click costs in ads, and how hard the organic slot is to win (0–100). Source: Semrush, September 2026.
Difficulty under 20 is winnable in months for a well-built page. Over 50 is a long campaign. The point of the audit is to tell you which of these you can take in your market, and in what order.
§ 03
How search works for dental practices
The mechanics are local-service mechanics. The details are yours, and the details are where the rankings are.
Service lines are separate markets
Someone searching “emergency dentist” at 11pm and someone searching “Invisalign cost” on a Sunday afternoon are different patients with different urgency, and Google ranks different pages for them. A practice with one “Services” page competes for neither. A page per service line — emergency, implants, aligners, pediatric, whitening, sedation — is the single biggest lever in dental SEO.
The profile does more than the site
For “dentist near me” the map pack takes most of the clicks and the site barely matters. What matters is the Google Business Profile: primary category, secondary categories for each service, photo count, review velocity, and whether the hours say “Open” when someone has a broken tooth on a Saturday. We manage it like a page, because it is one.
Insurance and cost queries are where new patients start
“Dentist that takes Medicaid”, “dental implants cost”, “does insurance cover Invisalign”. Practices avoid these pages because the answer is “it depends”. Say it depends, then say on what — the practice that answers gets the call, and the ones that hide the number get compared against it.
§ 04
What we usually find
Three faults that show up on most dental practice sites we audit. None are exotic. All are fixable.
Fault 1
Booking behind an iframe
The scheduler is a third-party widget in an iframe. Google cannot read it, it loads late on mobile, and half the time the button says “Book” and opens a blank box for two seconds. Patients leave.
The last step of the funnel is the slowest thing on the site.
Fault 2
One profile for three chairs, or three profiles for one
Multi-location practices with one shared profile, or single practices with a stale duplicate profile from a previous owner still ranking above the real one.
Split reviews, confused patients, a competitor in your slot.
Fault 3
Photos that are stock
Google measures engagement with profile photos. Stock smiles get skipped. Twenty photos of the actual reception, the actual chairs, the actual team outperform a professional shoot of strangers.
A profile that looks like every other profile.
§ 05
What the engagement looks like
Audit in two business days. Site live in three to four weeks. Month to month after that, cancel any time.
Audit the practice and the pack
Which service lines you offer, which ones have a page, and who holds the map pack for each in your area. Two business days.
A page per service line
Emergency, implants, aligners, pediatric, cosmetic, sedation — each with real cost ranges, insurance handling, and what the first visit looks like.
Profile management
Categories, hours, real photos, review replies, and a review flow tied to the visit. If you have multiple locations, one clean profile per chair.
Booking that Google and patients can both read
Native booking built into the page, click-to-call above the fold, and a phone that is answered — or an after-hours page that says exactly what happens next.
§ 06
Questions dental practices ask us
We already use a dental marketing company. Why switch?
You may not need to. Most dental marketing firms are good at ads and patient communication and thin on search — they hand you a templated site with one services page and a blog nobody reads. The free audit will show what they are and are not doing. If it is fine, we will say so.
How do you handle HIPAA on the site?
No patient data touches the marketing site. Forms collect name, contact and a reason for the visit, nothing clinical, and route to your existing systems. Reviews are replied to without confirming anyone is a patient. We build within that from the start.
Do reviews really matter that much?
For the map pack, more than almost anything else you control. Count, recency, rating, and whether you reply. A practice with 40 reviews and a 4.9 will usually sit above one with 400 reviews and a 4.2, so the goal is a steady flow of honest ones, not a campaign.
Can you work with our existing site?
Often, yes. If it is a solid foundation we add service-line pages and fix the technical faults rather than rebuild. If it is a page-builder site loading in six seconds with a booking iframe, a rebuild is cheaper than fighting it — and the audit says which.
Next step
Find out what your site is costing you
Send your domain and the towns you deliver to. You get a written audit back within two business days: the technical faults, the service areas you have no page for, and the exact terms your closest competitor ranks for that you do not. No call required to receive it.