Dental SEO keywords: the searches that fill an appointment book
Published by the Passieon team
Most lists of dental SEO keywords are a spreadsheet of a hundred phrases with a volume beside each, and a practice reads it and does nothing, because a spreadsheet does not say what to build. Patients make three kinds of search, and each kind belongs on a different part of your presence. Once you see that, the list is short and the work is obvious.
Everything below comes from the searches themselves, from the questions Google shows beneath the results and from the Search Console accounts of the practices we work with. The place names in brackets are whatever the patient types: a town, a neighbourhood, a postcode.
The emergency: the search that books the first practice that answers
Somebody with a broken tooth on a Saturday afternoon searches once, on a phone, and books the first practice in the map with a number that answers. They do not compare. The searches are "emergency dentist near me", "emergency dentist [town]", "toothache dentist [town]", "broken tooth [town]" and "same day dentist [town]", and they are worth more than their volume suggests because the patient is not shopping.
They belong on two things: a Business Profile with the right categories, real opening hours and a phone number that is answered, and one page on the site that says plainly what you do for an emergency, when, and how to reach you. Most practices have neither, which is why the emergency searches are the fastest win in dental SEO.
The treatment: the search that compares
A patient considering implants, Invisalign, veneers or whitening searches for the treatment by name, in their city, over several weeks. "Dental implants [city]", "invisalign [city]", "teeth whitening [town]", "veneers [city]", "root canal [town]" and "dental crowns [town]" are the shapes, and in most markets the volume sits with implants and orthodontics because the value does.
Each treatment belongs on its own page, written for the patient who is deciding: what the treatment involves, who it suits, what the appointments look like, what the alternatives are, and the questions people ask before they book. A practice with one Services page that lists twelve treatments ranks for none of them. A practice with twelve treatment pages ranks for each, and the pages are what an AI assistant quotes when somebody asks what Invisalign involves.
Two habits make these pages work. Write them in the words patients use rather than the clinical name where they differ: people search "teeth straightening" as well as "orthodontics", and "tooth whitening" as often as "teeth whitening" in some markets. And have the dentist review every page before it goes live, because a treatment page with a clinical error costs more than it earns.
The choosing: the search made by somebody new to the area
The third kind is the general search: "dentist near me", "dentist [town]", "best dentist in [town]", "private dentist [town]", "family dentist [town]" and, in some countries, the searches that separate public and private care. These are made by people who have moved, changed insurer or fallen out with their old practice, and they choose from the map and the reviews.
They belong on the profile and the reviews first, and on the practice page second. A profile with recent reviews, current photographs of the practice and the team, and every service listed will win the choosing search over a competitor with a better website and an empty profile, most days, in most towns.
The modifiers that decide the page
Three kinds of word attach to the searches above and decide where the page should live. Place words, from the city to the neighbourhood, decide the location pages and the profile's service area. Urgency words, such as "emergency", "same day" and "walk in", decide the emergency page. Money words, such as "cost", "price", "insurance" and "finance", are searched by people who are close to booking and deserve an honest answer on the treatment page even where the answer is "it depends, and here is what it depends on".
How to find your own list
Your Search Console already holds the searches your site appears for, including the ones it appears for badly, and the Business Profile's insights show the searches that led to calls and direction requests. Those two are the list to start from, because they are yours. Then look at what Google shows beneath the results for your main treatments, the questions and the related searches, and write those down as headings. A keyword tool adds the volumes and finds the variants, and it is the last step rather than the first.
What to do with it
Group the list into the three kinds above and build for each: the profile and one emergency page for the first, a page per treatment for the second, the profile and reviews for the third. Then measure what matters, which is bookings, in your own records. A ranking for "dentist [town]" that produces no appointments is a number on a report; a treatment page that produces two implant consultations a month is the business.
The whole method for a practice is written out in the local SEO guide for dentists, and the work as we do it is on the SEO for dentists page. The profile, which carries two of the three groups, has its own guide to Google Business Profile optimisation.
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