Dental SEO
Most dental SEO is a monthly blog post about the importance of flossing and an invoice. What actually moves a practice is narrower and less interesting than that, and it starts with finding out why Google is not already showing the pages you have.
A worked example, Croydon, Victoria
Fifth to first for "cdbs dentist croydon" in 14 days
Measured on a geo-located search from Croydon on 9 August, Divine ranked fifth, and the page Google chose was a general children’s post rather than anything about the scheme. The four results above it all had dedicated pages. We built one, consolidated 16 pages of internal links onto it, and re-measured on 23 August using the same method: first, ahead of Fine Tooth Company, Croydon Dental Clinic and Croydon Family Dentistry.
The full case studyWhat the work actually is
Finding out what is already broken
Before writing anything we look for the reasons existing pages cannot rank. Sitemaps submitting noindexed pages. Soft 404s where a missing URL quietly returns the homepage. Migrations that dropped their redirects. Duplicate pages competing with each other for the same term. This is where the fastest gains usually are, and it is rarely what an agency wants to sell you because it is finite work.
Consolidating, not just adding
One practice had 35 mentions of a government dental scheme spread across 23 pages, and no single page Google could identify as the one about it. It ranked fifth with an article that was not even on the topic. The fix was not more content. It was building one page and pointing the other 23 at it.
Content aimed at search demand, not word count
Someone with a broken tooth at 9pm does not search for a dentist in their suburb, they search for what has gone wrong. Someone whose child qualifies for a government scheme wants to know which cap applies to them. We write for those queries, sourced from the primary source rather than from memory, and localised with real data about the actual catchment rather than the suburb name pasted into a national explainer.
Local search and Google Business Profile
Categories, services, attributes, citations and the tedious business of removing outdated listings that still point at an old address. We will also tell you when the map pack is not winnable, which happens more often than the industry admits. If three competitors have your search term as their actual business name, no amount of retainer fixes that, and you are better off spending the effort where it is not structurally stacked against you.
AHPRA compliance, continuously
Testimonials, before-and-after imagery, superlatives, specialist titles and outcome claims are all restricted for registered health services. Penalties run to $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate. We have found real breaches on sites we inherited, including a practitioner described in terms only a registered specialist may use, and a health fund claim the practice was not entitled to make.
What we will not do
- Build links between the sites we manage. It would help nobody and it is exactly the pattern search engines look for.
- Coach patients to mention treatments in their reviews. It does not work in testing, and for a health service it is a compliance problem regardless.
- Bill you monthly for Google Business Profile posts. Controlled testing shows no ranking effect, and we would rather say so than invoice for it.
- Report a number we cannot show you the method for.
- Promise a position. Anyone who does is describing a coincidence they intend to take credit for.
SEO runs on a monthly retainer, from $1,000 for Silver and $1,500 for Gold, with the website included at no upfront cost either way.
Prices exclude GST. Full breakdown on the services page.
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