Local SEO for dentists: get found by the patients searching now
Patients do not browse for a dentist. They search once — "NHS dentist near me", "emergency dentist", "Invisalign" and a town name — and they ring one of the three practices Google shows on the map. We do the work that decides which three.
What local SEO means for a dental practice
It means your practice appears when someone nearby searches for a dentist, and looks like the obvious choice when it does. In practice: the right categories and treatments on your Google Business Profile, your NHS position stated plainly, a steady flow of recent reviews from real patients, and replies that never confirm who is a patient.
Where dental practices lose the call
Six things we find on nearly every practice profile we audit. None of them are clinical, and all of them cost appointments.
Your profile does not say where you stand on NHS
It is the first question every caller asks and the reason most of them are searching. A profile that leaves it unanswered gets the call anyway — and your receptionist spends the day saying no.
Emergency searches happen when you are shut
Toothache does not keep office hours. If your listed hours are wrong, your out-of-hours arrangement is not stated and nothing tells the searcher what to do, that patient rings the practice that did say.
Your only category is "Dentist"
Which leaves you out of the searches worth the most. Cosmetic dentist, orthodontist, pediatric dentist, emergency dental service — those are separate categories and separate intents, and a practice doing that work under one generic listing enters none of them.
The treatment list is empty
Every treatment you offer is a search someone is running this week. If Invisalign, implants, hygiene and whitening are not listed as services, Google is guessing from your website — if it reads it at all.
Your last review is from 2021
You see hundreds of patients a month, almost all of them satisfied, and none of them are asked. Meanwhile the practice two streets away collects one most days.
Somebody replied to a one-star and named the treatment
Confirming in public that a reviewer was a patient — or what they had done — is a confidentiality problem before it is a marketing one. It is the single most common mistake we see on dental profiles.
What we do for a practice
The same engine as everything else we run, set up the way a dental practice actually works.
A profile built for a practice, not a shop
Primary category chosen against what the practices ranking for your terms use, secondary categories for the treatments you want to be found for, every treatment listed as its own service, and a description that says what you do, where, and for whom in the first 200 characters.
What profile optimisation covers →Your NHS position, kept current
Whether you are open to new NHS patients, taking children only, or private-only, stated where a searcher sees it before they ring — and updated the week it changes, not the quarter after. Practices lose more goodwill to a stale answer here than to anything else on the profile.
Requests timed to how dentistry works
After a recall exam, after a hygiene appointment, at the end of a course of treatment — the moments a patient is pleased and unhurried. Never in the hour after an extraction, never after sedation, and never to someone mid-complaint. Your recall list is worked in batches, not blasted.
How the review requests work →Replies that do not breach confidentiality
Every review answered within 24 hours, and none of them confirming that the reviewer is a patient or referring to treatment. Anything clinical, or anything that reads like a complaint, comes to you first and goes through your own complaints procedure rather than a comment box.
How review management runs →Listings that agree with each other
Your NHS profile, your directory entries and your Google listing carrying the same practice name, address and phone — including the registered name where it differs from the trading name, which in dentistry it usually does.
How the citation clean-up runs →The treatment terms tracked, month over month
Not "dentist" alone — the searches with a patient and a fee behind them: implants, Invisalign, emergency, hygienist, whitening, each in your town, tracked from where your patients actually are.
How map pack ranking works →The systems we connect to
Requests fire off the appointment book, so nobody at the front desk has to remember. These are the ones we see most in UK practices.
Cloud-based, straightforward to work alongside. Requests trigger from completed appointments.
Software of Excellence, still the most common system in UK practices of any size.
Long-established and widely installed; we work from its appointment and recall data.
Common in independent practices, and fine to work with.
If yours is not on this list, it does not matter much — where a system cannot be connected we work from a weekly list of completed appointments instead, and the patient never sees the difference.
How it runs
One call and one handover from your practice manager. Nothing about it touches clinical time.
A 15-minute audit
Your profile, your reviews and the practices currently above you on the searches that matter — implants and emergencies as much as "dentist near me". Yours to keep either way.
Profile and listings
Categories, treatments, NHS position, hours and out-of-hours arrangement, photographs of the actual practice. Listings corrected so nothing contradicts them.
The hygiene list first
Hygiene appointments come round every three to six months against six to twelve for a check-up, so that list produces reviews soonest. Requests then run on every completed appointment, with the back catalogue worked in batches.
One report to the practice manager
New reviews, rating, response time, and from Growth up, where you rank on each treatment term and how many calls came from Google. One page, no login.
What we won't publish for a practice
You are a registered professional before you are an advertiser, and the marketing has to survive that. These are the ones that catch dental practices out.
The full policy, and the law behind each rule, is published.
Read the full compliance policy →What it costs
The same two plans as everything else we run. Nothing about dentistry costs extra; the work is just set up differently.
Proof that reviews come in — cheaply, and with no risk.
- Google Business Profile set up & optimised
- Automated review requests, with photo mechanic
- Every review replied to within 24 hours
- Customer Feedback System
- Monthly report
Where "trust us" becomes "here are the calls you got."
Priced on your market, your ad spend and how fast you want to move.
Foundation covers the profile, the review engine and replies. Growth adds weekly posts, treatment-term rank tracking, call tracking and citation clean-up. Priced per practice, ex VAT — a group prices per site, and multi-site groups get one consistent name, address and phone across every listing. No contract — cancel any month. Compare all three plans in full.
Questions we get asked
PermittedCan a dental practice ask patients for Google reviews?
Yes. Asking a real patient for an honest review is permitted and normal — what is not permitted is paying for reviews, offering anything in exchange, or filtering out the unhappy ones before they reach Google. The GDC expects your advertising to be honest and verifiable, and an unfiltered stream of genuine patient reviews is exactly that.
ConfidentialityHow do you reply to a patient review without breaching confidentiality?
By not confirming that the reviewer is a patient and not referring to any treatment. A safe reply thanks the reviewer for the feedback, states the practice policy in general terms, and gives a named person and a phone number to take it further offline. Anything clinical, and anything that reads like a complaint, goes to you first and into your own complaints procedure — not into a public thread.
AdvertisingCan we advertise Botox or teeth whitening in a Google post?
Not by naming the medicine. Botulinum toxin products are prescription-only medicines and advertising a POM to the public is prohibited in the UK, so we describe facial aesthetics without naming the drug. Tooth whitening is different — it is legal to promote, but it is a dental act: the treatment must be carried out by or under the supervision of a dental professional, and we will not write a post that implies otherwise.
RatingsWe are CQC registered. Is that not the rating patients look at?
In England, CQC registers and inspects dental practices but does not award them the star ratings it gives care homes and hospitals, so there is no public score there for a patient to compare. Your Google rating is the public rating you have, which is a slightly uncomfortable fact and the reason it is worth managing properly.
TimingHow quickly does a dental practice see anything?
Reviews move first: a practice seeing a few hundred patients a month, asking properly, usually has a visibly different profile inside two months. Map pack movement on competitive treatment terms takes longer — months, not weeks, and it depends on who is above you and how close they are to the searcher. On the audit call we will tell you which of those two you are looking at before you pay anything.
Honest answerOur books are full and our NHS list is closed. Should we bother?
Probably not with the review engine, no. If you cannot see more patients, more calls is a cost, not a benefit — your receptionist absorbs it and the caller is disappointed. What is worth doing is making the profile say so clearly, so the wrong calls stop, and keeping the reviews current for whenever that changes. We would rather say that on a 15-minute call than sell you a plan you do not need.
Related services
Fifteen minutes on your practice
Where you appear for the searches your patients actually run, which practices are above you and why, and the three things we would change first. Free, and yours whether or not you hire us.