How to read an SEO report for your dental practice

An SEO report for dental practices should answer three questions: are more people finding the practice in Google, are more of them getting in touch, and what was done this month to cause it? Most reports answer none of them directly. They show dozens of metrics, many of which go up on their own or mean very little. This guide explains how to read an SEO report or SEO audit, which numbers to trust, and the questions that expose a weak one.

What is an SEO report?

An SEO report is a summary of how a website is performing in search engines, and usually what work has been done to improve it. It normally comes in one of two forms:

• An SEO audit is a one-off check of a website for technical and content problems. Free SEO checker tools produce these automatically, and agencies often send one as a sales tool.
• A monthly SEO report tracks progress over time, usually rankings, traffic and work completed. If you pay someone for SEO, this is what you receive.

They need reading differently. An audit is a list of possible problems, most of them minor. A monthly report is evidence of whether your money is working.

Reading an SEO audit or SEO checker score

Automated SEO audit tools give a score out of 100 and a list of warnings. The score is the tool maker's own formula. Google does not publish a score like this. Treat it as a to-do list, not a grade.

Some common warnings matter for a practice. Others, by Google's own account, do not.

If an agency's audit leads with problems Google says it ignores, that tells you something about the agency.

The numbers in a monthly SEO report that matter

For a dental practice, five numbers tell you most of what you need. If your report does not include them, ask for them.

1. Enquiries from organic search. Calls, forms and online bookings from people who arrived through Google search, from Google Analytics key events. This is the closest a report gets to patients.
2. Non-branded clicks. Clicks from searches that did not include your practice name, from Google Search Console. These are people who did not already know you. Branded searches mostly reflect your existing reputation, not SEO.
3. Map pack positions for your main terms. Where you appear in the local map results for searches such as "dentist" plus your town, checked from more than one point in your catchment.
4. Reviews compared with the practices holding the map. Google's local ranking guide says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, so the gap matters.
5. Work completed. A plain list of what was changed, published or fixed, with dates. Without it you cannot connect any movement to anything done.

The numbers that need context

Average position

Search Console defines average position as the average position of the topmost result from your site, as set out in Google's Performance report guide. It averages across every search, place and device. It can rise because you started appearing for many obscure searches low down, which looks worse even though it is good, or fall the other way. Look at clicks alongside it.

Impressions and total traffic

Impressions count how often you appeared, not whether anyone noticed. Total traffic includes people who searched your name, existing patients looking up your phone number, and visitors from outside your area. A report that only shows totals can look healthy while new-patient searches fall.

"Keywords ranked" counts

A report saying you now rank for 800 keywords tells you nothing without knowing which ones. Many will be phrases nobody searches or that bring no patients. Ask for the top 20 terms by search volume that matter to you, with positions this month and last.

Authority scores

Domain authority and similar scores are made by SEO tool companies. They are not Google's measure and Google does not publish them. They can be a rough guide to how many sites link to you, but a rising score is not a result in itself.

Backlink counts

More links is not automatically better. Google's spam policies treat links created mainly to manipulate rankings as link spam, including low-quality directory links. A sudden jump in links from sites unrelated to dentistry or your area is a warning sign, not a win.

Reading a local SEO report

For a practice, the local part of the report deserves the closest reading, because the map results are where patients looking for a nearby dentist compare practices side by side. Check how map positions were measured:

• From where? A position checked from your practice's own postcode will flatter you, because distance is one of the three things Google says it weighs. Ask for positions from several points across the area you draw patients from. Our guide to map visibility across a catchment explains why one point is misleading.
• For which terms? "Dentist" plus your town, "dentist near me" and your key treatments, not phrases nobody types.
• Against whom? Your position only means something next to the practices above you.

Red flags in an SEO report

• Guaranteed rankings. Google's guidance on hiring an SEO says plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google.
• Only rankings, no enquiries. Rankings are a means, not the result.
• Terms you never asked for. Ranking first for "family dental care [village]" is easy if nobody else wants it.
• No list of work done. Or the same list every month.
• Every chart starts at the agency's start date. You need the year before too, so you can see what was already happening.
• Secrecy about methods. Google's hiring guidance warns against SEOs who will not explain what they are doing. You are entitled to know which links were built and where.

Questions to ask about any SEO report

1. How many enquiries came from organic search this month, against the same month last year?
2. How many clicks came from searches that did not include our name?
3. Where do we appear in the map for our five main terms, from several points in our area?
4. What did you change this month, and which result do you expect it to move?
5. What will you do next month, and why that first?

Google suggests similar questions before hiring anyone, including asking about expected results and timeframes, and how they will communicate changes. Our guides to what dental SEO costs and agency or in-house SEO cover the decision itself.

How to run an SEO report yourself

Can you do SEO yourself, and can you do it for free? You can certainly produce a useful report for free. Google's own tools cover most of it:

• Google Search Console for clicks, impressions and non-branded searches, and to check your important pages are indexed.
• Google Analytics for enquiries, once calls and forms are set up as key events.
• Your Google Business Profile performance view for calls, direction requests and website clicks from your listing.
• A phone search for "dentist" plus your town, noting the three practices in the map and their review counts.

Put the same figures into a simple SEO report template each month: a spreadsheet with one row per month and columns for each number above. After a few months, the trend tells you more than any single report. Google's Starter Guide says some changes take effect in hours and others take several months, so judge work over a quarter, not a fortnight.

Can ChatGPT do SEO?

ChatGPT and similar assistants can explain a report, draft page copy and suggest page titles. They cannot see your Search Console or Analytics data unless you give it to them, and they can state things confidently that are wrong. Google's guidance on using generative AI content says AI-written content is acceptable if it is useful and accurate, but that generating many pages without adding value may break its spam policy on scaled content abuse, and that you should fact-check everything before publishing. For a dental practice, that includes checking any clinical or price claim before it goes live.

If you would like an outside view of where your practice stands before your next report arrives, the free search audit needs no email.