What local SEO does for a dental practice
Local SEO is the work of showing up when someone nearby searches for what you do, mostly in Google's map results and Google Maps. Google says those results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence: how well you match the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how well-known you are, which it ties partly to links and reviews. You can't move your building, so the work goes into the other two.
The people searching want quite different things, which is why one Services page won't do it:
- In pain now. Emergency dentist, tooth pain, broken tooth, often after hours. They'll call whoever can see them soonest, so hours and the phone number matter more than anything you've written.
- New in town or between dentists. Dentist near me, family dentist. They scan reviews, photos and whether you take their insurance.
- Researching a big decision. Implants, clear aligners, sedation for a nervous patient, cost questions. They read for weeks, and they're where a single new case can pay for a year of this work.
- Checking insurance. Dentists that take a specific plan. If your accepted-plans page is out of date, you get the wrong calls or none.
Your profile, and the rules for individual dentists
Your practice needs a verified Google Business Profile with the right address, phone, hours and category. Google says businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up. Then there's the part specific to healthcare: dentists can also have profiles of their own, and the rules are stricter than most practices realize.
Google treats doctors, dentists and similar professionals as individual practitioners. Here's what its guidelines say:
- A practitioner should have a profile only if they're public-facing and can be contacted directly at that location during the stated hours. Support staff shouldn't have one.
- One practitioner, one profile. A dentist doesn't get extra profiles for implants and orthodontics.
- If several dentists see patients at one location, the practice gets its own profile, and each dentist's profile title uses only their name. Don't add the practice name.
- A solo dentist under a branded group shares one profile, named as brand, colon, dentist's name.
- Titles and degrees such as Dr. are allowed in a practitioner's name.
Do you need practitioner profiles at all? For a one-dentist practice, usually not. For a group, make them where patients really do ask for a dentist by name, and skip them for an associate who's leaving next year. A second listing is one more thing to keep accurate, and it's easy to end up with old ones lying around.
On hours, Google says businesses that operate only by appointment shouldn't list hours. A practice with a staffed front desk isn't that, so list the hours someone will actually answer. If you take emergencies after hours, say how on the site rather than claiming you're open.
Pages that bring in new patients
Give each treatment you want more of its own page. Dental implants, emergency care, children's dentistry and sedation are obvious candidates, but go by your own books: which cases are most profitable and most underbooked? Answer what patients actually ask, such as how much it costs, whether it hurts, how many visits it takes and whether insurance helps.
Health pages get held to a higher bar. Google says its systems give more weight to strong experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust on topics that can affect health. In practice, that means naming the dentist who wrote or reviewed the page, with their real credentials, and keeping treatment claims modest. A sentence from you about what you tell nervous patients is worth more than three paragraphs that could be on anyone's site.
Before you use the word "specialist" on a page, check your state dental board's advertising rules. And if you have more than one office, don't clone the location pages: Google's spam policies describe substantially similar pages for different cities as doorway abuse. Say which dentists work there, what the parking is like, and which treatments that office offers.
On the technical side, add structured data, which is code that tells search engines what a page is about. Google says to use the most specific LocalBusiness type possible, and schema.org has a Dentist type. Google's guide says the rating property is only recommended for sites that capture reviews about other businesses, so don't mark up your own star rating. If this is outside what you want to touch, our technical fixes feature drafts it for you, and a good web person can do it in an hour.
Replying to reviews without a HIPAA problem
Almost everything written about review replies assumes the business can defend itself in public. You mostly can't. These are real cases from HHS, the federal agency that enforces HIPAA:
| Practice | What happened | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| A North Carolina dental practice | Disclosed a patient's information on a webpage responding to a negative online review, then didn't respond to the investigators. A law firm's summary says the patient posted on Google under a pseudonym, and the reply gave the patient's name, visit dates and reasons for treatment. | $50,000 penalty (2022) |
| Elite Dental Associates, Dallas | Social media disclosures of patient information. The same summary says the practice answered a Yelp review with the patient's last name and details of her treatment plan and insurance. | $10,000 settlement and a corrective action plan (2019) |
| Manasa Health Center, New Jersey (psychiatric care) | Responded to negative online reviews with patient information and lacked the required policies. | $30,000 settlement and a corrective action plan (2023) |
HIPAA protects information that relates to a person's health or the care given to them and that identifies them. Read that carefully and a friendly "Thanks for coming in, Sarah, glad the crown is holding up!" looks like a problem: it names her and describes her care. The same law firm summary warns that a patient choosing to share details online doesn't free you to discuss them. Google's own reply tips suggest addressing reviewers by name and acknowledging their specific feedback. Good advice for a pizza place. For a dental practice, leave out anything that confirms they're a patient.
Keep a few replies ready. These are examples to check with your compliance person, not legal advice:
- Good review: "Thank you for the kind words. Our team works hard to make every visit comfortable."
- Bad review: "We take every concern seriously, but privacy rules mean we can't discuss anyone's care here. Please call our office manager at [number] so we can look into this."
- Probably not a patient at all: the same reply as above. Saying "we have no record of you" is itself a statement about who is and isn't a patient. Google lets you report reviews that break its policies, though not ones you merely dislike.
Getting more reviews the right way
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Google offers a link and a printable QR code, and a QR code at checkout is a nice fit for a dental office because it doesn't require using a patient list at all. Keep it low-pressure: Google says you shouldn't require or pressure people to review while they're on the premises, and you can't ask only the patients who seemed happy, offer anything in return, or tell them what to write.
If you use software to text patients a review link, it's handling names and phone numbers for you, so ask whether it needs a business associate contract. HHS requires one when a vendor helps a covered practice with its health care functions using protected information. And if you ever want to quote a patient's words on your website, get that past your compliance person first: HHS says marketing uses of protected information generally need written authorization.
Keeping it going without another full-time job
Most of this is a one-weekend setup and then a few minutes a week: replying to reviews, updating hours for holidays, keeping the insurance list right, adding a page when you add a treatment. Your profile's performance report shows calls, website clicks and search terms. Compare that with what you ask every new patient on the intake form: how did you find us?
Sojig, our product, can carry the weekly part. It tracks where you appear in Google Maps from each city you serve, and drafts review replies, posts and profile fixes for you to approve, along with the website work. Nothing goes out without you, which matters here: you're the one answerable for what a reply says, so read each one with the table above in mind.
It's the wrong tool for appointment reminders or recall campaigns, since it doesn't connect to your practice software. Google's Local Services Ads are the faster route if you need new patients this month, and they screen dentists. If you're comparing general options, start with our list of SEO tools for small businesses, and see how other businesses use Sojig. Law firms face a similar practitioner rule, covered in local SEO for lawyers.