Dental marketing and SEO for dentists and dental practices

Advernation is a marketing agency in New York, started in Queens in 2007 by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and working from 1115 Broadway in Manhattan. We do dentist SEO, profiles, reviews and ads without contracts. A dental practice is a health care provider, so we plan the work around patient privacy and the state’s advertising rules, and the dentist approves what is published.

Who this page is for

This page is for general and family dentists, pediatric dentists, orthodontists, periodontists, oral surgeons and other dental specialists, in a single office or a small group. What medical practices of every kind share, including the privacy rules in more detail, is on our healthcare marketing page. This one is about what is particular to teeth.

How patients search for a dentist

Patients search for a dentist in three moods, and one practice usually wants all three.

• In pain. A toothache, a broken tooth, a lost crown. The search is short, on a phone, often outside office hours, and includes words such as “emergency” or “open now”. The map and an answered phone decide it.
• Looking for a regular dentist. Someone has moved, changed insurance or has a child who needs a first visit. They search “dentist near me” or a neighborhood, compare ratings, check which insurance is accepted and whether there are evening hours. A family that chooses a dentist tends to stay, which makes this the search with the longest value.
• Weighing a treatment. Implants, aligners, veneers, whitening. The patient reads for weeks, compares costs and looks closely at the dentist. Each treatment is a search of its own and needs a page of its own.
• And, as everywhere, by name: the patient referred by a friend or another dentist looks the practice up before booking.

The rules a dental practice works under

Two sets of rules apply before any marketing choice is made. The first is HIPAA. The Privacy Rule says a covered entity may not use or disclose protected health information except as the rule permits, and that it must obtain an authorization for any use or disclosure of that information for marketing, apart from face-to-face communication and promotional gifts of nominal value. For a dental practice that settles some common questions: a before-and-after photo, a patient’s story or a smile on social media each needs the patient’s written authorization first.

The second is the state’s rule on professional advertising. In New York the Board of Regents’ rules of unprofessional conduct apply to the professions licensed under Title VIII of the Education Law, where dentistry sits. They count as unprofessional conduct advertising that is false, fraudulent, deceptive or misleading, advertising that guarantees any service, and claims of professional superiority the licensee cannot substantiate. Testimonials and portrayals of practice are permissible on conditions, among them that the patient expressly authorizes the portrayal in writing, and fictional client testimonials are not permitted. A licensee who advertises must keep an exact copy of each advertisement for one year after its last appearance.

In practice, we do not write “painless”, “the best” or “guaranteed” on a dentist’s behalf, we keep a dated copy of every ad and page we publish, and we ask the practice to confirm the rules of the state where it is licensed.

Dental SEO on the map

Google chooses the three practices on its map mainly by relevance, distance and prominence: how well the profile matches the search, how far the office is from the person searching, and how well known the practice is, counting reviews and links from other sites. It says a better local ranking cannot be requested or bought. Distance is fixed, so a dentist’s map territory is the area around the office, and the work is to be the strongest profile inside it.

That means a profile with the practice’s real name and nothing added, since Google does not permit unnecessary information in a business name. It means few and specific categories, every treatment listed as a service in patients’ words, accurate hours including the evenings and Saturdays patients look for, and photos of the real office and team. Google names dentists among individual practitioners, so each dentist who sees patients at the office during stated hours may have a profile too, separate from the practice’s and carrying only the dentist’s name. That is useful when patients ask for a dentist by name and a burden when dentists come and go. We decide it with the practice.

The website and its pages

A dental site needs one page for each treatment the practice wants more of, and those pages do the ranking. An implant page says who is a candidate, what the steps are, how long it takes, what affects the cost and who at the practice does it. It is written in plain words, reviewed by the dentist and free of promises. The same goes for aligners, crowns, root canals, children’s dentistry and the rest.

Four other pages are worth the effort. An emergency page puts the phone number first and states honestly when someone answers. A new patient page says what a first visit involves. An insurance and fees page lists the plans accepted and how payment works, because patients search for exactly that. And each dentist has a page stating training and licensure accurately. We do not add a page for every nearby neighborhood: Google’s spam policies call pages made to rank for similar searches and funnel visitors to one place doorway abuse.

Patient reviews

A dental practice sees many patients a year, so it can build reviews faster than most professions, and patients read them closely. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a local ranking, requires that reviews reflect a genuine experience, and prohibits offering free or discounted services in exchange for them. That rules out the whitening kit for a review. We set up a request with a link or QR code, given to every patient at the end of a visit.

Replies follow one rule: nothing that confirms the reviewer is a patient and nothing about the visit. The Privacy Rule’s standard on disclosure applies to a reply as it does to any other statement by the practice, and New York’s rules also count revealing personally identifiable facts obtained in a professional capacity, without consent, as unprofessional conduct. We draft short replies that thank the reviewer or invite a call, and the practice approves each.

Dental marketing beyond SEO

A dental marketing agency should run the paid and owned channels as well, each within the same rules.

• Search ads. Good for emergencies and for treatments with the margin to support them, limited to the area around the office and to the hours the phone is answered. We run them under Google Ads management, from $500 per cycle.
• Pay-per-lead ads. Google’s program lists dentist and orthodontist among its health categories. It checks the provider and the practice, their licenses and malpractice insurance, and verifies the National Provider Identifier. The order of the ads comes from an auction that weighs the bid, the rating, the number of reviews and response time.
• Re-targeting. We plan without it. Google lists health among its sensitive interest categories and does not let advertisers in them use their own audience lists.
• The website. Online booking that works on a phone is worth more than any design. If the site cannot do it, we rebuild it under web design.
• Social media and AI search. Social shows the office and the team, and patients only with written authorization; see social media marketing. Google says its AI features need no special optimization beyond indexed pages and an up-to-date Business Profile; see AI search optimization.

What we do, month by month

When	What we do	What you see
Month one	Free audit of the site and the practice and dentist profiles, with a read for claims the advertising rules would not allow. The searches patients make around your office, by treatment, and who shows for them. Call and booking tracking.	The plan, the treatments to lead with, and what has to be corrected.
Months two and three	Treatment, emergency, new patient and insurance pages written, reviewed by the dentist, published. Profile services, hours and photos completed. Listings made consistent. The review request added to checkout.	Reviewed pages live, reviews arriving, calls and bookings counted by source.
Months four to six	Pages for the elective treatments. Answers to patients’ common questions. Links from dental societies, schools and neighborhood sources. Ads for the treatments chosen, if wanted.	Map and search positions moving, with new patient numbers beside them.
Every month after	New pages as treatments and dentists change, review replies for approval, a dated archive of what was published.	One report: calls, bookings, positions, traffic.

What it costs and how to judge a quote

A practice has two kinds of new patient, and a quote should be judged against both. A regular patient is worth a modest amount each year for many years, and brings a family. A treatment case such as implants is worth a large amount once. Work out each figure for your own practice, after costs, and divide the monthly fee by it. If a few new families a month or one large case covers the fee, the question is whether the work can deliver that, and the booking count answers it within a season.

We quote monthly SEO plans for dental practices after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.

The SEO audit is free. Google Ads management is from $500 per cycle; a cycle is one test of a campaign and the practice sets its length: a day, a week or a month, so one treatment can be tested before the rest. The pricing page keeps the prices together.

What we need from the practice

We need access to the website, the profiles and any ad account. We need the list of treatments, the ones you want more of and the ones you refer out, the insurance plans accepted and the real hours. We need a dentist to review pages, one person to approve replies, and photos of the office and team. And we need a monthly count of new patients, as a number, with no patient information attached.

What we can and cannot show

We have not published a result for a dental practice, so we will not quote you one. Our published case studies are from other fields. For a dentist we show the audit and the method, and the first reports show whether calls and bookings moved. We will not promise a position, since Google says no one can guarantee a first place ranking, and we will not promise patient numbers.

Related pages: local SEO services for the map, the New York SEO company page for practices in the city, and the other industries we work with. Close neighbors of dentistry have pages of their own: med spa marketing, plastic surgeon SEO and chiropractor marketing.

Questions people ask