A dental practice gains new patients at three moments: someone moves house, someone is unhappy with their current dentist, or someone suddenly has pain. In all three cases the search starts on a phone with “dentist” plus the town, and ends at the practice that inspires trust fastest and makes booking an appointment easiest.
SEO for dentists is therefore mainly local SEO, with two particularities: patients judge a healthcare provider more strictly than a shop, and the website handles health data, which demands extra care under the GDPR. This article covers both.
How patients look for a dentist
Dentist plus place. “Dentist Breda”, “dental practice Roosendaal accepting new patients”. The map results decide most of this; whoever is not in the top three rarely gets called.
Complaint or treatment. “Broken tooth what now”, “emergency dentist weekend”, “cost of a crown”, “fear of the dentist”. Urgency and uncertainty. A clear answer to these questions is the start of a long relationship.
Comparing. “Dentist reviews”, “dentist without waiting list”, “hygienist or dentist”. The patient weighs options and looks for confirmation.
Google Business Profile first
For a practice, the Business Profile matters more than the website. Complete it fully: category Dentist plus specialisms (dental hygiene, implantology, orthodontics where offered), opening hours including emergencies, whether you accept new patients, which insurers you accept and whether you are contracted. Add photos of the practice, the treatment rooms and the team; anonymous practices get called less.
Reviews are decisive here, and they can be steered: ask for a review after a treatment that went well, with a QR code at the desk or a message afterwards. Respond to every review, but never confirm that someone is a patient and never mention a treatment. Professional secrecy applies in a two-sentence reply too.
The pages your website needs
A page per treatment. Check-up and cleaning, fillings, crowns and bridges, implants, root canal treatment, whitening, anxiety support. Per page: what it is, when it is needed, how it goes at your practice, roughly what it costs and what the patient can expect afterwards. These are the pages that rank on treatment questions and reassure the anxious patient.
A page for new patients. Are you accepting, how to register, what to bring, how it works with the previous dentist and the records. This is the page the person moving house is looking for.
An emergency page. What to do about pain outside opening hours, with the number of the emergency service. This page is found and appreciated in the evening and at the weekend.
Fees. Dental fees in the Netherlands are set nationally, so you may and can publish them. A page with the most requested codes and amounts, plus an explanation of what insurance does and does not cover, answers one of the most searched questions.
Trust and care
For health information, Google weighs heavily who the author is. Put the name and BIG registration of the dentist who reviewed each treatment page on it. A team page with real photos, training and registrations does more for your findability and your conversion than any design.
Avoid claims about results, before-and-after photos without explicit consent, and superlatives such as “the best dentist in the region”. The rules on healthcare advertising and the KNMT code of conduct are clear here, and factual information works better than advertising.
The intake form: where it goes wrong
Many practice websites ask for medical details, medication or the reason for the visit on the registration form and forward it by email. Email is not a secure channel, and health data is special category personal data under the GDPR.
Online, ask only for name, contact details and a preferred time. The medical history belongs in a secure patient portal or in the treatment room. Next to the form, state briefly what happens to the data, and make sure no analytics scripts or marketing pixels load on pages that describe a condition; the page visited can itself say something about someone’s health.
Fast, mobile and accessible
The patient in pain searches on a phone and has no patience. A light, fast site with the phone number and the “book an appointment” button at the top of every page wins. Think of older patients and patients with a disability too: a large enough font, sufficient contrast, forms that can be operated with a keyboard.
Frequently asked questions
May we offer online appointment booking?
Yes, provided the system is suitable for healthcare: encrypted, hosted in the EU, covered by a processing agreement and without medical details ending up in an ordinary calendar or email. A good online booking system noticeably increases the number of new patients.
How do we handle a negative review?
Respond quickly, kindly and in general terms: thank them for the feedback, say you would like to discuss it and refer to a phone number. Confirm or deny nothing about the treatment or about the fact that someone is a patient. A calm response to a critical review often convinces readers more than ten glowing ones.
Is Google Ads worthwhile for a dental practice?
For “emergency dentist” plus place and for “new patients” it can pay off, provided your Business Profile and pages are in order. Otherwise you pay for clicks that do not call. Start with the organic foundation.
How quickly do we see results?
Changes to the Business Profile and new reviews feed through to the map results within weeks. Treatment pages usually need three to six months to rank on treatment questions.
Where to start
Search on your phone tonight for “dentist” plus your town. Check whether you are in the map results, how many reviews you have compared with the neighbours, and whether a new patient reaches an appointment in two clicks. That is your to-do list. We build practice websites with secure intake, accessibility and local findability as standard; see our website packages or tell us about your practice.
