The NHS and private split changes everything
Two very different searches happen in dentistry, and a practice site that treats them alike serves neither.
‘NHS dentist near me’ and ‘NHS dentist taking new patients’ are high-volume, urgent and often desperate. They convert instantly if you have capacity and waste everyone’s time if you do not — so the single most valuable thing on the page is a plain statement of whether you are taking NHS patients, updated when it changes.
Private treatment search is the opposite: considered, comparison-heavy, and worth far more per patient. Someone researching implants or Invisalign reads several practices, compares prices, and decides on trust. That takes depth, not a services list.
Treatment pages are the whole game
| How they search | What the page needs | |
|---|---|---|
| Implants | Price-led research over weeks | Costs, process, recovery, before-and-afters |
| Invisalign / ortho | Brand-aware, compares providers | Provider status, case numbers, finance |
| Cosmetic / whitening | Impulse-adjacent, visual | Photographs, clear pricing |
| Emergency | Urgent, mobile, now | Availability today, phone number, hours |
| Routine / NHS | Availability-led | Whether you are accepting patients |
Each of those deserves its own page. A single ‘Treatments’ page listing all five will lose every one of them to a practice that wrote a proper page about implants.
What the GDC rules allow
Dental advertising is regulated and it shapes the content:
- Claims must be justifiable. ‘Best dentist in Dorset’ is a problem; ‘over 900 implants placed’ is fine if true.
- Before-and-after images must be your own work, unedited, and represent typical results. They are also the highest-converting asset on a cosmetic page, so it is worth doing properly rather than avoiding.
- Prices must be clear and current, including what is and is not included. Again, compliance and conversion point the same way.
- Named clinicians with GDC numbers are required for registration and happen to be strong trust signals. Anonymous ‘our team’ pages underperform badly here.
Where the local gains come from
- The Google Business Profile category. ‘Dentist’, ‘Cosmetic dentist’, ‘Dental implants periodontist’ and ‘Orthodontist’ are separate categories that rank differently. Most practices use the broadest one available.
- Reviews, relentlessly. Dentistry is anxiety-led; patients read reviews more closely than in almost any other local sector. Ask every satisfied patient.
- Opening hours and emergency availability kept accurate. A practice listed as open on a Saturday it is not generates bad reviews and lost trust.
- Proximity is decisive — most patients choose within a few miles, so map pack position matters more than organic ranking for routine care.