Dental SEO · Canada and the USA
Dental SEO puts your practice in front of patients at the moment they search. The toothache that needs a dentist today is won on Google Maps. The implant, Invisalign or veneers case is won on the page a patient reads for weeks before they book. We rank practices in Canada and the US for both, on Google and in AI answers.
30 minutes on Google Meet. For practices doing $20k a month or more.
“emergency dental care centre Oakville”
Burloak Centre Dentistry
Dental SEO, explained
Dental SEO is the work that gets a dental practice to show up when people nearby search for a dentist, an emergency appointment or a treatment like implants, Invisalign or whitening. SEO stands for search engine optimization: improving your Google Maps listing, your website and your practice’s name around the web so Google, and the AI tools patients now ask, pick you first. You don’t pay per click for any of it. It is how new patients find you on the searches they already make.
How long a patient takes to choose
Your practice needs both, and they search in completely different ways. Here is what each one types, how they decide, and what Google looks for.
“emergency dentist near me”, “broken tooth”, “same day dentist”
How they search: On a phone, in pain, often after hours. They pick from the first few practices on the map and rarely scroll further.
What they look at: How close you are, whether you are open now, what other patients say, and a number they can tap.
What wins it: Your Google Business Profile (the listing that shows on Google Maps), an emergency page for each location, hours that match how you really work, and a steady flow of new reviews.
“dental implants cost”, “invisalign vs braces”, “veneers near me”
How they search: For weeks, across Google and AI tools, comparing cost, results and the dentist.
What they look at: A clear page for the treatment, a named dentist they can trust, and real before-and-after work.
What wins it: A page for every high-value treatment, dentist profiles, and plain answers to the cost, pain and recovery questions patients ask.
It is making sure that when someone near your practice types a dental problem or a treatment into Google, your practice is one of the first names they see, and that what they find makes them choose you. Three things decide it: how relevant your listing and pages are to the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how well known and trusted your practice is online.
For a dentist that means a complete Google Maps listing, a page on your website for each treatment you want more of, profiles of your dentists, and your practice named on trusted local and health sites. It is the same local SEO we do for any business that serves people nearby, planned around how patients search.
The listings themselves are free. Nobody pays Google to rank on the Maps list or in the normal results, and nobody pays per click there. What costs money is the work that gets you there: the pages, the listing, the links and the reviews. You can do that yourself, hire someone, or hire an agency.
Paid ads are the other route. They put you at the very top for as long as you keep paying, every click costs you, and the ad disappears when the budget stops. One way is to run both: ads to cover the gap while the rankings climb, then less ad spend once the free spots are yours.
The 80/20 rule is a rule of thumb: a small share of what you do brings in a large share of the money. In a practice that is usually a few treatments, such as implants, Invisalign or cosmetic work, next to a long list of routine visits.
Dental SEO follows the same idea. Instead of one page that lists every service, the treatments you most want more of each get their own page, built to rank in your town. The urgent searches keep the chairs full; the treatment pages bring the cases you want more of.
The method is the same; the patient is not. Health searches are held to a higher standard by Google, so it looks harder at who wrote a page and whether the practice is real and trusted. That is why named dentist profiles, real treatment photos and reviews that mention the treatment matter more here than for a shop or a restaurant.
Dental searches also split by town much more tightly: a patient with a toothache will not drive 40 minutes. If you have more than one location, each one needs its own listing and its own pages to show up in its own area.
General and family dentists, emergency dental clinics, cosmetic dentists, orthodontists, implant and oral surgery practices, pediatric dentists, and groups with several locations. It works best for established practices doing at least $20,000 a month, with the chair time to take on more patients.
Proof
Real searches and real positions, each screenshot cropped to the result it proves. Three dental practices first, then practices and businesses whose customers search the same way.
A general and cosmetic practice. Five searches patients type on Google and where Burloak ranks for each one now, from the toothache that can’t wait to the whitening they plan for weeks.
Read the Burloak case study.
A general and emergency practice. Two searches patients type on Google, where the practice started and where it is now. Two more are in the healthcare gallery below.
More stories like this are on our case studies page.
An orthodontist. On Google Maps it reached the top three by day 20, and by day 60 it held the top three up to 7 miles from the office. In the normal results, the number of searches Google shows the site for grew from 203 to 818 between day 0 and day 90.
Read the Grand Oaks case study.
Two more Pathways searches, then a med spa and a chiropractor: practices whose patients search by treatment and by town, the same way dental patients do. Each card names the exact search.
Google search · Calgary
Pathways Dental Clinic
for “NE Calgary Dental Services”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#2
Result number 2 for the exact search, shown in the screenshot.
Google search · Calgary
Pathways Dental Clinic
for “sedation dentists calgary”
Before
#5
Now
#2
Result number 2 for the exact search, shown in the screenshot.
Google search · Margate City
Lux Skin & Lasers
for “Microneedling Margate City”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search · Margate City
Lux Skin & Lasers
for “Skin tightening treatment Margate City”
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search
Rosedale Wellness Centre
for “Pediatric Chiropractor”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Treatment pages from two of the practices above, each ranking for the treatment patients typed. Each card names the exact search.
Google search · Calgary
Pathways Dental Clinic
for “restorative dentistry”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#4
Result number 4 for the exact search, shown in the screenshot.
Google search · Calgary
Pathways Dental Clinic
for “Orthodontics in NE Calgary”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#7
Result number 7 for the exact search, shown in the screenshot.
Google search · Oakville
Burloak Centre Dentistry
for “Emergency Dentists Services Oakville”
Now
#3
Result number 3 for the exact search, with its emergency page, shown in the screenshot.
Businesses that win on the Maps list, where urgent dental patients choose. Each card names the exact search.
Google Maps
Candace & Basil
for “luxury furniture stores”
Before
#10
Now
#1
Top of the Maps list, below any ads.
Google Maps
Candace & Basil
for “luxury dining tables”
Before
#12
Now
#2
Number 2 in the Maps list, competitors and all.
Google Maps
Mae Fence Company
for “cedar fencing company”
Before
Not shown
Now
#1
Top of the Maps list, below any ads.
Google Maps
BEELER
for “septic cleaning near me”
Before
#12
Now
#2
Number 2 in the Maps list, competitors and all.
Google Maps · Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville Area Movers
for “local movers”
Every point
1st or 2nd
Each green dot is one spot on the map where the search was run. On the August 2023 grid, every dot shows them first or second.
Google Maps
Non-Stop Air Conditioning & Heating
for “HVAC repair”
Before
#16
Now
#2
Number 2 in the Maps list, competitors and all.
Businesses in the normal Google results for the jobs they sell, the way a treatment page ranks.
Google search · Hillsboro
Super Fabrications
for “fence builder hillsboro”
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search · Trenton
Covers in Play
for “Swimming Pool Enclosure in Trenton”
Before
Not in top 100
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search
Covers in Play
for “Best Pool Enclosures”
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search · Moncton
Sunly Energy
for “solar panel installation moncton”
Now
#2
Number 2 of the unpaid results, on page one.
Google search · Las Vegas
Purple Flare Wraps
for “Las Vegas Car Wrap”
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
Google search · Edmonton
Noble Protection Dogs
for “Executive Protection Dogs Edmonton”
Now
#1
The first unpaid result for the exact search.
When someone asks ChatGPT or reads Google’s AI answer for a business like theirs, these clients are named or linked as a source.
ChatGPT
Modernistic
for “Best carpet cleaning company in Michigan”
ChatGPT’s answer opens with one “Recommended Company”: Modernistic.
Google AI Overview
Angkorscape
for “Luxury Landscape Designers”
Now
Cited
Named in Google’s written answer and linked as a source beside it.
Google AI Mode
Super Fabrications
for “fence company chantilly”
Now
Cited
The first source listed beside the AI Mode answer.
Google AI Overview · Toronto
Everything Mortgages
for “Mortgage Refinancing for Renovations Toronto”
Now
Cited
Linked as a source inside Google’s written answer.
Google AI Overview
B Generous
for “Bridge Loans for NonProfits”
Now
Cited
Linked as one of the sources beside Google’s written answer.
What we do
We work on the three places patients look: Google Maps, the normal Google results and AI answers in ChatGPT and Google. Start with Google Maps or the normal Google results, or run both, and AI answers are included either way. We weight the work toward the treatments that matter most to your practice.
Example listing
★★★★★ · Dentist · Open now
Dr. Your Name, DDS
Implants and cosmetic dentistry · 14 years in practice · Speaks English and Spanish
Example layout of a dentist profile.
“Which dentist near me does Invisalign and takes new patients?”
A few well reviewed practices nearby: Your Dental Practice …
How patients search
Patients type the problem or the treatment, add “near me” or their town, and pick from what Google shows first. These are the numbers we plan dental SEO around.
1.83M
“dentist near me” in the USA, every month
And 246,000 a month in Canada. The biggest dental search we measured, and Google answers it with the Maps list first.
$38.76
One ad click for “dental implants near me” in the USA
Google Ads’ own estimate. A top Maps listing or a first-page result doesn’t charge by the click.
135,000
Searches a month for “dental implants cost” in the USA
Patients research the price before they pick a dentist. The practice whose page answers it gets read first.
USA. From 40,500 searches in the quietest month to 135,000 at the peak.
USA. From 6,600 searches in the quietest month to 33,100 at the peak.
Google Ads search estimates for the whole country, pulled October 2026. Each chart is scaled to its own peak.
| Search | USA | Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Finding a dentist | ||
| dentist near me | 1,830,000 | 246,000 |
| family dentist near me | 40,500 | 2,400 |
| teeth cleaning near me | 33,100 | 2,900 |
| Treatments | ||
| dental implants near me | 90,500 | 12,100 |
| cosmetic dentist near me | 74,000 | 5,400 |
| invisalign near me | 60,500 | 12,100 |
| teeth whitening near me | 49,500 | 9,900 |
| veneers near me | 18,100 | 12,100 |
| Kids and braces | ||
| pediatric dentist near me | 201,000 | 5,400 |
| orthodontist near me | 246,000 | 18,100 |
| Researching the treatment | ||
| dental implants | 165,000 | 12,100 |
| invisalign | 368,000 | 49,500 |
| dental implants cost | 135,000 | – |
| invisalign cost | 74,000 | – |
Monthly searches, average over a year. Google Ads estimates for the whole country, pulled October 2026. A dash means we didn’t measure that search there. Google gives no figure for some health searches, such as emergency dentist searches, so they are left out rather than guessed.
Because the patient wants a dentist they can get to. “Dentist near me” alone is searched 1,830,000 times a month in the USA, and Google answers it with the Maps list first. A practice that is not in the top three on that map for its own area misses the biggest dental search there is.
Both. Someone choosing a new dentist for a treatment searches the treatment. “Invisalign” gets 368,000 searches a month in the USA and 49,500 in Canada. Someone who already knows your name will find you anyway; the treatment searches are where you meet patients who don’t.
The searches are the same and the numbers are smaller. In Canada “veneers near me” is searched about as often as “dental implants near me” (12,100 a month each), so cosmetic pages carry more weight there.
Some do. “Dental implants near me” in the USA moved between 40,500 and 135,000 searches a month over the last year, and “veneers near me” between 6,600 and 33,100. We build and push those pages ahead of the busy months, not during them.
Treatments
Each treatment is its own search, with its own patients and its own competitors. This is how we handle the ones practices ask us about most, and the numbers behind them.
High value, long research
“Dental implants near me” gets 90,500 searches a month in the USA, and one ad click for it is estimated at $38.76. Implant patients read for weeks before they book. The page that wins answers cost, financing, single tooth versus full arch, recovery time and who places the implant, with real cases.
Compared on price and results
“Invisalign” gets 368,000 searches a month in the USA and “invisalign cost” 74,000. Patients compare aligners with braces, price with price, and practice with practice. A page that says what you charge from, how long treatment runs and whether you offer free consultations gets read before the booking.
Chosen on photos
“Cosmetic dentist near me” gets 74,000 searches a month in the USA. Cosmetic patients pick on the work they can see, so each treatment page carries real before-and-after photos, with the patient’s permission, and the dentist who did the work. Burloak Centre Dentistry in Oakville is #1 for “cosmetic dentistry oakville” (case study).
Won in minutes, on a phone
The patient is in pain and picks from the first few practices that are open. The page that wins says when you take emergencies, whether same-day visits are possible, what to do until they arrive and a number they can tap, and it matches your Maps hours exactly.
Parents search, and compare carefully
“Pediatric dentist near me” gets 201,000 searches a month in the USA. Parents want to know the dentist is gentle, the office is set up for kids and what the first visit looks like. A kids’ page with photos of the space and the team answers that.
Braces and aligners for kids and adults
“Orthodontist near me” gets 246,000 searches a month in the USA and 18,100 in Canada. Grand Oaks Orthodontics in Oakville went from 203 to 818 searches Google shows its site for in 90 days (case study).
For nervous patients
Anxious patients search for sedation and gentle care before they search for a dentist. A page that explains the options you offer, who is eligible and what the visit feels like, in calm plain words, reaches patients who have put off treatment for years. Pathways Dental Clinic in NE Calgary went from #4 to #1 for “sedation dentist” searches in its area.
A small treatment that brings new patients
“Teeth whitening near me” gets 49,500 searches a month in the USA and 9,900 in Canada. A clear whitening page with prices and options is often a new patient’s first visit to your practice.
Cost
Google Maps starts at $1,497 a month. Google rankings start at $2,697 a month. Both go up for multiple locations, multiple websites and complexity. See how our SEO pricing works.
Dental SEO plans
Google Maps
$1,497+
Google rankings
$2,697+
a month. Higher for multiple locations, websites and complexity. AI answers come with every plan. No long-term contracts.
More locations, more websites and a bigger or more complex site take more work. A group with three offices counts as multiple locations, and every extra treatment and town page adds work.
Google answers emergency and “dentist near me” searches with the Maps list first, so a practice that wants more new patients nearby usually starts there. Implants, Invisalign and cosmetic work are researched on websites, which is where the Google rankings plan works. Some start with one and add the other once it moves.
They are paid differently. Ads charge for every click, and an implant click is estimated at $38.76 in the USA. SEO is a monthly fee for the work on the listing and the results below the ads, where nobody pays per click. You can run both.
The work on your Google Maps listing, new treatment and location pages, dentist profiles, fixes to your site, mentions and links on other sites, and getting named in AI answers.
Dental practices already doing at least $20,000 a month. Below that, there is usually not enough coming in yet for rankings to change much.
Timing
Fixes to your listing and website usually show first, because Google only has to look again. New treatment and location pages take weeks, and trust built across the web takes longer.
Listing and site fixes
Usually first
Wrong categories, missing treatments, hours that don’t match and pages Google can’t read tend to show soonest, once Google looks again.
Treatment pages
Weeks
New pages for implants, Invisalign, emergencies and the rest need Google to find them and test them against the practices already ranking.
Location and town pages
Weeks to months
Each area is its own competition. A downtown core with a dentist on every block takes longer than the suburbs around it.
Mentions, links and AI answers
Longer
Trust built across the web adds up month after month, and it keeps working after it is in place.
An illustration of the usual order, not a schedule. Your area and your competitors set the pace.
How many practices already rank in your area, how long your listing and site have been around, how many offices and treatments you want, and how strong the practices ahead of you are. A single office in a smaller town usually moves faster than a group taking on a whole city.
Grand Oaks Orthodontics was in the Maps top three by day 20 and held it at day 60, up to 7 miles out (case study). Pathways Dental Clinic reached #1 for “same day emergency dentist in NE Calgary” within 60 days.
We look at your listing, your site and the practices ahead of you, then fix the listing and the site problems first. The first treatment and location pages go up after that. You can check every ranking yourself, and we show you each change as it is made.
Yes, two. They are set out word for word in our SEO guarantees, with what counts and what happens if we miss.
Page one in 60 days, or we work free.
Guarantee 01
20days
If you don’t see visible improvement in your key metrics within the first 20 days, we refund $200 on top of returning your payment for that period.
What we measure: your traffic, what that traffic is worth, how much authority your site and its pages carry, and how many other sites link to you, against the day we start.
Guarantee 02
60days
If your qualifying keywords aren’t on the first page of Google within 60 days, we keep working for free until they are.
What counts: at least one high-value search for your business on page one of Google.
No long-term contracts. Results keep you here. Paperwork doesn't.
Before you sign
The questions to ask any SEO company before you sign, and our answers.
Before you sign, ask for
Awkward Media
A live result for a dental practice
✓
A page plan for each treatment
✓
A written guarantee
✓
No long-term contract
✓
A monthly price in writing
✓
AI answers included
✓
Every change shown to you
✓
Ask for the exact search and a live result, not a chart. Ours: Burloak Centre Dentistry in Oakville, #1 for “emergency dental care centre oakville” and “cosmetic dentistry oakville”. The whole story is in the Burloak case study.
Ask which treatment pages they would build first and why. If the answer is one “services” page listing everything, implant and Invisalign patients will land on a competitor’s page that answers their questions.
A good company puts its promise in writing. Ours are in our SEO guarantees.
Be careful with a 12-month lock-in before anything has moved. We have no long-term contracts.
Get a monthly price and a list of the work in writing. Ours are in the cost section above, and AI answers come with every plan.
Ask how they would handle emergency searches, dentist profiles, before-and-after photos and the rules on patient testimonials. An agency that only talks about local SEO in general builds the same pages it builds for a plumber.
A page for sedation when you don’t offer it wins searches you can’t take. Tell them the treatments you want more of, the ones you refer out and the areas you draw from, and check the plan follows that list.
Your Google Maps listing and your website belong to your practice. Whoever you hire should be added as a manager, not take over as the owner, so nothing is lost if you ever part ways.
Ask who you deal with week to week and how fast they reply. With us, your account manager answers in plain words and changes you ask for go live quickly, so new hours or a new offer aren’t stuck waiting for a meeting.
Dental SEO terms
The words you’ll hear from any SEO company, and what each one means for a dental practice.
Questions
What dental practices ask us before they start.
Book my free strategy callIt gets your practice found when patients search for a dentist or a treatment: on Google Maps, in the normal results and in AI answers. That means setting up your Google listing, writing a page for each treatment and office, fixing what holds your website back, and getting your practice named on sites Google trusts.
That search is won close to the person searching, so we build your listing, your emergency page and your local signals across the neighbourhoods your patients come from. Burloak Centre Dentistry ranks #1 for “emergency dental care centre Oakville” and #2 for “emergency dental clinic Oakville”.
Yes. We find the exact searches their patients type, then build the pages and the Google listing that win them. Grand Oaks Orthodontics went from 203 searches Google showed it for to 818 in 90 days, after we made its site cover each treatment clearly.
Yes. Each office needs its own Google Business Profile, its own location page with real details, and its own reviews. We plan the group as a whole so your offices don’t compete with each other for the same searches.
They’re one of the things Google weighs, and the first thing a patient reads. Google also weighs how close you are to the person searching, how well your listing and pages match the treatment they searched for, and how often trusted sites mention and link to you. We set up a simple routine for asking happy patients for a review, and work on everything else at the same time.
Yes, it’s part of every plan at no extra cost. Clear treatment pages, named dentists and matching practice details everywhere are what these tools quote. We show you where your practice is named and where it isn’t yet.
Health pages sit in the group Google calls “Your Money or Your Life”, where bad advice could hurt someone. Dental pages do best when a named dentist stands behind them, the credentials are real, and the answers on cost, pain and recovery are clear and accurate.
Yes. You can start with the one or two treatments you want the most of. We build those pages and the searches around them first, then widen to the rest of what you offer.
We do. A dentist on your team reads each page before it goes up, so every claim about a treatment is one your practice stands behind.
Yes. Dental regulators in each province and state set rules on what a practice may say in its advertising. We write within the rules that apply to you, and nothing goes up without your sign-off.
Because Google Maps changes with where the person searching is standing. A patient across town sees a different order from the one you see at the front desk, which is why we check your position across the areas you serve, not from one spot.
You see your positions for each treatment and each area against the day we started, with screenshots of the real Google screen. You can check every ranking on Google yourself, and your account manager answers any question fast, in plain words.
It’s the part of dental SEO that wins searches with a place in them: “dentist near me”, or a treatment plus your town. It runs on your Google listing, your location pages and your practice’s name across local sites. More on local SEO services.
The usual mix is referrals, paid ads and the free listings on Google Maps and Google search. Ads stop the day you stop paying. The free listings keep showing your practice without a charge per click, which is why they’re worth building even if you run ads too.
Yes. We start by checking what was done and what’s holding you back, with a full SEO audit, and keep what works. You own your website, listing and content the whole time.
Not to start. We fix what holds your current site back first, and tell you plainly if something needs rebuilding.
No. Nobody controls the order Google shows. What we put in writing is page one, set out word for word in our SEO guarantees.
Yes. We work with businesses across both countries. The dental results on this page come from practices in Oakville, Ontario and NE Calgary, Alberta. See our cities for the areas we cover.
Yes. See chiropractor SEO, therapist SEO, med spa SEO and SEO for plastic surgeons.
Where we work
We work with dental practices and other businesses across the United States and Canada. Pick your city to see how we plan SEO there, or read on through the services behind dental SEO.
All of them on our industries page.
Dental SEO draws on all of these. These pages cover the rest of the work, from the words on your pages to being named in AI answers.
Read how the work went for businesses like yours, from the first month to the result.
Plain-English reading before you hire anyone.
Every city we cover is on our locations page. Working across the whole country? See our SEO agency for the USA.
As seen in and rated on
Your next step
A free 30-minute strategy call on Google Meet. We search for your treatments the way your patients do and show you which practices are taking those calls.
Bring with you
We search your market live
The way your customers do, in the towns you serve.
We show who's above you, and why
On Google, on Maps and in the AI answers.
You leave with a road map
Yours to keep. If we can help, we'll invite you to work with us.
For established businesses doing at least $20,000 a month.
