Start with what a patient is worth
SEO (search engine optimisation) means getting your practice in front of people when they search Google for something you offer, without paying for each click. Dental SEO services, SEO services for dentists, a dentist SEO service: these all describe the same thing, someone doing that work on a practice's website and Google listing.
Before you read anyone's proposal, work out what the work has to earn. Say you own a two-surgery mixed practice in Shrewsbury (made up, like the numbers). You want more implant cases. After lab fees, materials and clinician pay, a typical case leaves you £1,200, and you're looking at spending £1,000 a month. That's £12,000 a year, so you'd need ten extra cases a year to cover it, or some mix of cases and long-term private patients.
Ten cases is something you can check against your own treatment plans. A chart of rising traffic isn't.
Be honest about the size of the prize, too. Implants plus the name of a market town isn't a big search, and Google's Keyword Planner says keywords with very low search volumes aren't discoverable there at all. Those searches can still pay, because a private practice needs few patients. It does mean nobody can honestly promise you a number of them.
What the work should include
Google's page on hiring help lists the useful services: reviewing your content and site structure, technical advice, keyword research and training. Here's what that looks like at a dental practice, and what you should be able to see when each job is getting done.
| The job | What it means at a practice | What you should be able to see |
|---|---|---|
| Research | Working out what people search before they book, by treatment and by area. A keyword is just one of those searches. | A list tied to the treatments you want more of, with a reason for each |
| Treatment pages | One page for each treatment you want more of, answering cost, visits, suitability and who does it | Drafts a clinician has read and signed off |
| Business Profile | Your free listing in Google Maps: category, hours, services, photos. Our UK guide goes through it. | A profile your practice owns, with details that match your site |
| Reviews | A routine way of asking every patient, with no reward and no filtering | A process you can describe in a sentence |
| Technical upkeep | Fixing what gets in Google's way or annoys visitors: broken links, bad redirects, missing titles, slow pages | A dated log of changes. Google suggests asking whether you'll be told all of them, with reasons |
| Practice details | What the GDC expects on the site: your NHS, mixed or private status, contact details, a GDC link, your complaints procedure, each dentist's qualification and GDC number, and a last-updated date | A checklist someone has ticked, with a date |
| Links | Other real sites, like local organisations and professional bodies, linking to you | Every link by address, and anything that was paid for |
| Reporting | Enquiries by treatment and source, as well as rankings | A monthly sheet you can check against your practice software |
Not every practice needs all of this every month. A solo private dentist in a small town might need a solid profile and eight good pages, then very little for a while. Our guide for dental practices covers how the pieces fit together, and local SEO for dentists has more on Google's rules for individual practitioners, though its privacy section is about US law.
Put the price page on the list. The GDC says you must give clear information on prices in your practice literature and on your website, and the Competition and Markets Authority's guide for patients tells them to check prices online and compare practices. The CMA is also running a market study of private dentistry, with emerging thinking due around now and a final report by 4 March 2027, so watch that page.
The rules stay with you, whoever does the work
Google says you're responsible for the actions of any companies you hire. Its spam policies cover buying links for ranking purposes, doorway pages built for similar searches (such as one page per nearby town with the name swapped) and pages produced in bulk to game rankings.
The GDC goes further. Whenever you or your practice produce information with your name on it, you're responsible for checking it's correct. So here's what to read for on any page before it goes live.
| On the page | What to check |
|---|---|
| "Specialist", "orthodontist" | Only for dentists on a GDC specialist list. Everyone else can say "special interest in", "experienced in" or "practice limited to". |
| "Best", "leading", "top" | The CAP Code asks for documentary evidence behind claims people will read as objective. The GDC also says you must not compare dental professionals' skills or qualifications on your site. |
| Results, speed and pain | No unjustified expectations. The ASA has told dentists not to call brace systems "less painful" or faster without high-quality clinical trials. |
| Before-and-after photos | CAP treats them like testimonials: keep proof they're genuine, permission and contact details, and show what most patients can realistically expect. |
| "Dr" and Botox | CAP says a dentist using "Dr" should make clear it's a courtesy title. Botox is prescription-only and can't be advertised to the public. |
| Reviews | Fake reviews and hidden incentives are illegal under UK consumer law, and Google bans rewards and asking only happy patients. |
The practical control is dull: name one clinician who signs off every page, and keep the date. There's more on all of this in our guide to GDC advertising rules.
What it costs in pounds
We couldn't find an independent UK survey of what dental practices pay for SEO. These figures come from firms that sell this work, so read them as indicative, and ask whether any quote you get includes VAT.
| Published by | Monthly price | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| Whitehat SEO, March 2026 | £300 to £600 | Freelancer or budget: on-page work, rank tracking, basic profile management |
| Whitehat SEO | £600 to £1,200 | Small agency: adds local SEO, 4 to 8 posts a year, quarterly reports |
| Whitehat SEO | £1,200 to £2,500 | Mid-sized agency: adds technical work, 12 to 16 pieces a year, link building, monthly calls |
| Whitehat SEO | £2,500 to £5,000+ | Specialist dental agency: adds content strategy, conversion tracking, quarterly reviews |
| Dominate Dental, September 2025 | £500 to £1,500 | Single-dentist practice |
| Dominate Dental | £2,000 to £5,000 | Three to eight dentists |
| Dominate Dental | £5,000 to £20,000+ | Large practices and groups |
Whitehat says London and the South East add 20% to 40%. For context on the whole marketing budget, RR Dental Accountants calls 3% to 6% of turnover typical for an established practice, and SEO is only one slice of that.
Go back to your own number from the top of this page, then ask what ships each month for the price.
Four ways to get it done
| Who does it | It suits you when | What you still do |
|---|---|---|
| You or someone at the practice | You run one site and a practice manager has some hours. Google says a small local business can probably do much of the work itself. | All of it, and finding the time is the hard part |
| A freelancer or consultant | You want one person's judgement on a defined project, or a second opinion on your own plan | Supply the clinical knowledge and sign off pages |
| An agency with dental clients | You want a team running it, often alongside ads or web work, and the budget fits | Answer questions, sign off pages and watch the numbers |
| Software | You have a working site and someone who'll spend a few minutes a week approving drafts | Read everything, and add what only you know |
Search for the best dental SEO and you'll find ranked lists of companies. We couldn't find an independent body that ranks them, so treat those lists as names to call, then ask the questions below.
Questions to ask, including of yourself
The first few come straight from Google's list. The rest are specific to dentistry. Good answers are concrete.
- Can I see previous work, and talk to a past client?
- What results do you expect, by when, and how will you measure them?
- What's your experience with dental practices, and in my town?
- Will you share every change you make to my site, and why you made it?
- Who at my practice signs off each page, and how do you handle GDC numbers and specialist wording?
- Can I see every link that gets built, and was any of it paid for?
- Who owns the domain, the site, Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile, and what happens to them if we stop?
Get that last one right on day one. Search Console has owners and users, and a Business Profile has one primary owner plus managers who can do nearly everything except manage users or remove the profile. Put your practice in the top role and give any helper the role below it. For a first audit, Google suggests giving read access to Search Console only.
How to tell if it's paying
Results show up in a rough order, which helps you see where things are stuck. Work ships. Google shows your pages more often, which appears as impressions in Search Console's performance report. Clicks follow. Then calls and forms, then booked consultations, then accepted treatment plans.
Google says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months, and that not every change makes a noticeable difference. So review by the quarter, and don't expect anyone to give you an honest date for a specific ranking. The numbers will be small, too, so one implant case can swing a quarter. Look at the trend over two or three of them.
Ask every new patient how they found you and write it in one spreadsheet, with the treatment and its value beside it. Your Business Profile's performance page adds calls, website clicks and the searches people used. When you read search data, ignore searches for your own practice's name, since those people were already looking for you.
Where Sojig fits
Sojig is our product, so read this with that in mind. It's software, priced in US dollars, with plans from $99 a month as of November 2026. Each week it drafts technical fixes, drafts an article, drafts pages for searches your site misses and tracks your rankings on Google and Bing, including Google Maps from your town. In Manual mode, the default, nothing ships until someone approves it, and a dental practice should stay in that mode. It can draft Business Profile replies, posts and fixes, but for now you copy those in by hand.
It's the wrong pick if you want a person who owns all of this and picks up when you call, and that's a good reason to hire a consultant or an agency with dental clients. It won't check your copy against GDC or CAP rules, so the sign-off stays with you, and it doesn't run ads. Google also doesn't evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, ours included. If you're deciding where SEO sits in the wider budget, read marketing for dentists in the UK.