Location pages for dental practices: when they work

Location pages for dental practices are pages on your website written for patients in a specific place, such as a nearby town or suburb you draw patients from, or, for a group, each of your practices. They can help you appear in ordinary Google results for searches like "dentist [nearby town]". They cannot put you in the map pack for a town you are far from, and if they are near-copies of each other with the town name swapped, Google's spam policies describe them as doorway pages. This guide covers when to build them, what goes on one, and the mistakes to avoid.

What location pages can and cannot do

Start with what decides local results. Google's guide to local ranking says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity (the section on the last is headed Prominence), where distance is how far each business is from the person searching. A page on your website does not move your practice. So:

If you want to rank higher on Google Maps in your own town, the levers are your Business Profile, reviews and website relevance. Our guide to local SEO for dentists covers those. Location pages are for the ring of places just beyond.

The doorway page problem

Google's spam policies define doorway abuse as creating sites or pages to rank for specific, similar search queries. One of Google's own examples is having multiple pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page.

The same document describes scaled content abuse: many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings and not to help users, including pages produced with automation that add no value.

The common dental version looks like this: twenty pages titled "Dentist in [village]", each with the same three paragraphs, the village name swapped in, and a button to the same booking page. That is the pattern both policies describe. At best those pages do nothing. At worst they can draw a manual action under those policies.

The test is simple. If you deleted the town name, would the page be identical to the others? If so, it is a doorway.

When a location page is worth building

Build one only when all three of these are true:

1. People search for it. There are real searches for dentists in that place. Check Search Console for queries containing the town name, and search "dentist [town]" yourself to see who ranks now.
2. You genuinely serve it. Patients already travel from there, or it is a reasonable journey. Your appointment records will tell you which postcodes your patients come from.
3. You have something specific to say. Travel time, transport links, parking, why patients there choose you, what is or is not available closer to them. If you cannot write three genuinely different paragraphs, do not build the page.

For most single-site practices that means a small number of pages for the nearest towns and suburbs, not dozens.

Improve an existing page before adding a new one

Before you write a new location page, check Search Console for which of your pages already appears for searches with that town name. If your homepage or a treatment page already shows for "dentist [town]", strengthening that page with useful information for patients from there may work better than adding a second page that competes with it.

What goes on a good location page

Write it for a patient in that town deciding whether the journey is worth it.

• A specific title and opening. "Dentist for [town] patients, ten minutes away in [your town]" is honest. "Dentist in [town]" when you are not in it misleads the reader and Google.
• How to get to you. Driving time and route, bus or train links, parking, step-free access. This is the most useful information on the page and the hardest to copy across towns.
• Whether you can see them. NHS or private, whether you are accepting new patients, catchment rules if any.
• The treatments people travel for. If patients come from that town mainly for implants, aligners or emergency appointments, say so and link to those treatment pages.
• Your team and opening hours. Including evening or Saturday hours that suit commuters.
• Genuine reviews. Only real reviews, shown accurately, without identifying anyone who has not agreed to it. The ASA's CAP Code requires you to hold evidence that testimonials are genuine.
• A clear next step. Phone number and booking button.
• A few honest FAQs that a patient from that town would actually ask, such as "Is there parking?" or "Can I come in on my lunch break from [town]?"

The GDC's guidance on advertising still applies to these pages. Your website must show the geographic address where care is provided, which is your real address, not the town the page targets, and it must be clear whether the practice is NHS, mixed or private.

Location pages for practice groups

For groups with several practices, location pages are not optional. Each practice should have its own page with its own details, because Google's Business Profile guidelines ask for a phone number that connects to the individual location or a website that represents it. They also say you should not use web addresses that redirect people to pages other than those of the actual business.

Each practice page should have:

• the practice's own address, phone number and hours
• its own team, with qualifications and GDC numbers
• its own treatments and prices if they differ
• directions, parking and access
• local business structured data for that location. Google's local business guide recommends the most specific business type and says structured data does not guarantee any search feature
• a link from that practice's Google Business Profile, rather than every profile pointing to the group homepage

Google's guidelines also say all locations of a chain should use the same name unless the real-world name consistently varies by location.

Location page design: a simple structure

1. A heading that says who the page is for and where you are.
2. A short opening answering "can I come to you from [town], and how far is it?"
3. Getting here: route, time, transport, parking.
4. Accepting new patients: NHS or private, with the booking button.
5. Treatments patients from there most often come for, linked to the full pages.
6. Team and hours.
7. Reviews and FAQs.
8. Address, map and contact details.

There is no ideal length. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether you are writing to a particular word count because you have heard Google prefers one, and answers that it does not. Write until the patient's questions are answered.

A local pages checklist

• Each page targets a place with real searches and real patients.
• Each page would still be useful with the town name removed, because of its specific travel and access detail.
• No page claims you are located somewhere you are not.
• Each page links to the relevant treatment pages and is linked from a sensible place in your site, not hidden.
• For groups, each Business Profile links to its own practice page.
• You check Search Console after a month or two to see whether the page appears for the searches you built it for, and improve or remove it if not.

How to tell whether a location page is working

In Search Console, filter the Performance report by the page and look at the queries it appears for. If it shows for searches with the town name and earns clicks, it is doing its job. If after a few months it appears for nothing, it either lacks demand or lacks substance. Improve it once with genuinely better information, and if that does not help, remove it and redirect it to your most relevant page.

For a sense of how your visibility changes across the area around your practice, our guide to map visibility across a catchment explains why the same search gives different results a mile apart.