Guides
Local search, explained for dental practices
Plain guides to how patients find a practice, what each part of it is worth, and which bits are worth your time. Written from the same public data the product reads.
Start your free monthNo card. See your own town first.
How many Google reviews does a dental practice need? 1,532 UK towns measured
We searched every city, town and suburb in the United Kingdom for a dentist, and measured the 6,314 practices ranking in them. The answer depends on how many practices compete in your town: 70 Google reviews holds a place on the map where three to five compete, 246 where twelve or more do. Five years of search data then shows what patients are asking for, when they ask, and which counties are still open.
Read the guideHow to reply to Google reviews
The mechanics take two minutes. The judgement takes longer, and for a healthcare practice one wrong sentence in a public reply is a regulatory problem rather than a marketing one.
Read the guideWhat dental SEO actually costs in the UK
Most articles about dental SEO pricing are written by people selling dental SEO. This one is written from the invoices of a practice that bought it.
Read the guideHow to work out your practice's Google review target
The review count that holds a Google map place is set by your town, not the country. Here is how to work out yours from the practices already holding the pack, with the national figures from 1,532 places to check it against.
Read the guideLocal SEO for dentists: how the map pack is actually won
Three practices get a map place for your main search term. Everyone else is below the fold. Here is what decides which three, and which parts of it you can move.
Read the guideWhat is dental SEO?
A short, plain answer, without the jargon and without pretending it is more precise than it is.
Read the guideSEO for dental practices: a practical guide
Everything a practice owner needs to decide what to do about search, in the order the decisions actually arrive.
Read the guideMarketing for dentists: what is worth doing, and what to measure
Five channels, ranked by what they realistically return for an independent practice, and the one measurement that keeps any of them honest.
Read the guideGoogle Ads for dentists: when it is worth it
Ads buy you the top of the page today. Whether that is a good trade depends on one number most practices never work out.
Read the guideDental SEO agency or do it yourself?
Both answers are defensible. What is not defensible is paying for one and not knowing whether it worked.
Read the guideHow to get more dental patients
The cheapest new patients are the ones already on your books. Everything after that gets progressively more expensive, and most practices start at the wrong end.
Read the guideSocial media marketing for dentists: what it is good for
Social media is very good at one job in dentistry and quite poor at the one practices usually hire it for.
Read the guideSee your own town.
Every guide above was written from the same public data the product reads. The free month points it at your town: every practice competing with yours, sized by the share of local search each one holds, re-checked weekly.
Run on our own practice first: ninth in its town's searches in May, first in September. Page-one keywords: 6 in May, 194 now.
Thirty days free. No card, and nothing starts automatically when it ends.