Local SEO attracts shortcuts, and dental practices are a favorite target for them. Most of the tactics below can produce a short-term bump, which is how they get sold. They also break Google’s published rules, and when they stop working, the practice, not the agency, pays for it with suspended listings or lost rankings.
Fake or borrowed locations
Google Business Profile is only for addresses where the practice actually serves patients during its stated hours. A virtual office, a mailbox, a shared desk or a room you rent once a month is not a location, and creating a profile for one can get it suspended, sometimes along with your real one. If someone offers to “open” a listing in the next town over, ask whether a dentist will be seeing patients there. If not, say no. The GBP mistakes chapter covers suspensions in detail.
Doorway city pages
A common package is dozens of near-identical pages, one for each nearby town, with only the town name swapped. Google’s spam policies call this doorway abuse: pages created to rank for similar searches that funnel visitors to the same place. They rarely help, and they can drag down the whole site. If you genuinely draw patients from surrounding areas, one honest page about the areas you serve, with directions and travel times, is enough.
Bought links and keyword names
Link packages, private blog networks and paid “guest posts” are link spam under Google’s policies. Keywords added to the practice name, on the profile or in citations, break the Business Profile guidelines and are easy for competitors to report. Both can work for a while. Neither is worth the risk.
Agency ownership
Some agencies register the practice’s domain, website, profile or tracking numbers in their own name, so leaving means losing them. Before you sign, make sure the practice will own every account and can take everything with it. Ask what happens to the website, the phone numbers and any listings if you cancel.
Doing multiple locations the right way
If you really do have more than one office, local SEO works location by location:
- One Business Profile per staffed office, each with its own address and local phone number.
- One location page per office on a single practice website, with its own address, hours, directions, dentists and photos. Real differences make the pages unique; swapped town names don’t.
- Separate citations for each office, each matching its own location page.
- Link each profile to its own location page, not to the homepage.
- Close listings promptly when an office closes, and mark it moved if patients should go elsewhere.
One website for all locations is usually easier to manage and build up than a separate site for each office.
Questions to ask any agency
- Which locations and pages will you create, and does each match a real, staffed office?
- Where will links come from? Can I see examples?
- Who will own the domain, website and accounts?
- How will you report calls and new patients, not just rankings?
More on judging what marketing spend returns is in the marketing budget and ROI guide.