SEO for dentists: How we can help you gain more customers at your dental practice

Dental search engine optimisation is in demand more than ever. Let’s face it, when we are in pain, we want to visit a reputable dental practice as soon as possible. Here at Walsh & Partner, one of Cardiff’s most established agencies, we connect customers with businesses.

This means regardless of where your dental practice is based, our team of SEO experts can help you gain more clients.
In this article, we will take a deep dive into how to implement search engine optimisation best practices for dental practices based in the UK.

 

Date: 18/11/2025

Author: Ryan Walsh, Senior SEO Consultant at Walsh & Partners

The internet is awash with dental practices; in any large city, you’re going to have an abundance of businesses all competing with one another. This is where we can help you stand out; we are among the best in the business at what we do. Therefore, when somebody is looking for local dentists on Google we can help your business rank higher organically as well as within the “Google Business results”.

The importance of investing in a quality dental practice SEO

Customers often do not understand the mechanics of how Google works; they usually believe that the businesses that appear at the top of the results are the most trusted and the best to opt for.

Therefore, search engine optimisation is such an effective form of marketing. The reason for this is not only do you appear in front of the customer when they are most likely to make a purchase, but you are also viewed as a trusted and recommended business if your constantly appearing high on Google.

More visibility across a wide range of dental keywords, such as “teeth straightening”, well, this is what can help draw in more business. When we are talking about a capital city, this literally has a significant impact on the business’s bottom line, as potentially thousands of new customers could come through the doors. We here at Walsh & Partners are therefore dedicated to generating more visibility for businesses, helping to increase clicks and attract more customers.

 

Don’t be second best.

When you’re on the second page of Google, your business will often receive very few enquiries.

For example, it’s said that 75% of all shoppers never visit the second page.

Now, the reason we emphasise this point so clearly is that, imagine your city, and imagine how many dental practices there are based within that location. On the first page of Google.co.uk, there are usually only three businesses which get ranked in what SEO consultants call the “Google Business results” or the “map results”.

Then in the main results, called Google’s “organic results”, well then there’s sometimes 10 spaces, it might be set to infinite scroll, however, the customer often doesn’t scroll too far, as they want to select the business that’s at the top, as they usually perceived by the shopper as the best, the bees’ knees if you will.

According to other key metrics, the top 3 results mentioned on Google will receive the lion’s share of the clicks, accounting for 54.4% of all clicks. This means that if you’re not at the top of the organic results, well, there’s a significant part of the pie that you’re missing out on.

 

Sock it to me, how can dental practice SEO help my business grow?

Improved visibility

Really, what we are competing for today is attention and also convenience.

If the customer can’t find you with minimal effort, they will not bother, they will choose another company.

Additionally, note that if you can’t capture a customer’s attention from the start, when they read say your “featured snippet” or meta description, then, you’ll likely lose out on gaining that customer.

The bounce rate will escalate, triggering over time that Google’s algorithm, also known as “RankBrain AI”, which reshuffles the results, will ultimately end up moving your business down Google’s results.

So, leading SEO agencies, such as ours (Walsh & Partners), have to juggle many tasks; we must retain the shopper’s attention (engagement metrics), draw them in, and ensure that the website is considered as a leading company for gaining relevant information, such as how the teeth straightening process really works.

It’s only then that across the pages, the Google E-EAT score will be deemed high, and your dental practice can then move up Google’s organic ranks.

 

More organic traffic, perhaps means less Adword spend?

Don’t get us wrong, Google Adwords is a very effective way of drawing in new customers to your dental practice.

Often, many customers don’t know or don’t care whether it’s a Google AdWords listing, a Google Business listing, or a Google organic result they are clicking on. Therefore, sometimes businesses are solely reliant on their Google AdWords campaign to help draw more business.

However, sometimes companies tell us that they want to minimise their Google AdWords spend and instead start to spend a bit more on improving their organic search engine optimisation.

This is where we can come in.

Ryan Walsh is one of the best, if not the best, SEO experts in Wales- whos been cited by some of the worlds best SEO resources simply has a wealth of knowledge on digital marketing that’s second to no other SEO consultant. Therefore, we can devise a plan to help get your dental practice higher in Google’s search engine results pages when you come and visit us.

 

How do you get businesses higher on Google?

First thing we look at is the “on-page SEO factors”

Now, this is a good place to start, as some businesses may not have optimised their company website for any of their primary keywords.

This means that, the following might not be optimised:

• The companies Schema and structured language information
• No clear NAP
• No Google Business account set up or claimed
• Weak use of H1-H6 tags
• Not optimised the Meta descriptions
• Weak content marketing
• Content thin pages
• Use off AI text, which is a massive no, no
• Duplicated text present
• Not optimised alt text
• Not written the content marketing to produce a high enough Google E-EAT score
• Weak backlinks
• Ineffective use of internal links to re-direct link juice throughout the site
• Slow load times
• Poorly designed mobile version of the website
• Website offers poor U.X

Can you now start to see why our SEO team have so much work on our hands!

For example, your business may focus on teeth whitening services; however, if you don’t set up a page and correctly optimise the page for this important keyword, you stand no chance at all of appearing in Google’s organic results for this critical keyword for your business.
This is where our clever, switched-on SEO consultants will, over a cup of tea, instantly see that you are missing a key opportunity.

We then start to address these issues as we work through the various pages on your company website.

 

Content marketing

As a dental practice owner, you often don’t have the time to write blog posts, optimise main pages, and create evergreen content marketing.

You’d like to go home, have a glass of wine, and let us handle this work for you.

We have worked with leading dental practices; we know our stuff, and we can handle all the content marketing work for you.

We are not some newly set up agency that’s blagging it, we have over 10 years of experience.

All you need to do is approve our YouTube work, or written work and we will set it live. Then, we use our sophisticated SEO tools, as well as Google’s tools, such as Google Search Console, to complete the rest of the work and monitor its performance in Google’s results.

 

Keywords

Keyword research is essential; however, what’s more important is sitting down with business owners or the dental practice managers and working out where they want to draw in more business.

They may want more teeth-straightening customers; we can help draw those customers in through our extensive knowledge of on-page, as well as off-page, SEO techniques. There are very few agencies in Cardiff that possess our vast knowledge of this process.

 

Page load speed

It’s a constant process of improving the page speed. We use GTMetrix and Google’s Page Speed Testing Tool to test page speed.

You may feel that the company website is slow, as its all down to your 5G connection with your phone; however, it’s could also be related to the website’s design. For example, if the website is bloated, with too many WordPress or CMS plugins which slow down the overall website’s load speed.

 

Mobile friendliness

Is the website optimised for mobile smartphones and tablets, i.e is there a separate design of the website for mobile devices?

 

Off-Page Factors

What are off-page factors?

If you really want to get your business to the top 3 SERPs on Google.co.uk, then what you will need is a strong backlink profile (do-follow and no-follow backlinks).

If you’re unsure what a backlink profile means, don’t worry; we will explain it to you now.
A backlink profile is essentially a comprehensive list of all the domain names that link directly to the pages or posts on your website. Now, if you have top-quality links, powerful links from well-known brands, that is what is needed, which can have a dramatic effect on your business’s rankings. As a matter of fact, a link from, say, a leading supplier of dental equipment, could be enough to move you several places in the SERP’s.

Therefore, what you need to do is partner with an agency that is working diligently and hard to increase your business’s links. We use some of the best backlink checking tools on the market, such as Ahrefs, Moz and also we use SEMRush. If the on-page SEO ranking factors are done correctly, with good quality, white-hat work, then it comes down to how many quality links the business has.

If you have powerful links, then this can massively help your business’s SEO.

 

Positive reviews

It might feel all warm and fuzzy when a customer leaves a glowing review on your Google Business account; however, this can also help improve your local SEO as well.

The reason is simple: many top agencies believe that positive Google reviews are what make the difference between where a business ranks in Google Business results. However, this positivity also spills over to the Google organic rankings as well. If you are familiar with Google E-EAT, you will know that to improve the authority aspect, you need not only good quality backlinks but also positive reviews, which reinforce that your business is good at what it does.

 

Social signals.

If you regularly post as a business on social media and the posts receive hundreds of thousands of likes, Google’s algorithm, which is essentially fed by “Googlebot”, will index this. It will detect that your business is gaining many likes on social media sites such as Facebook, X and LinkedIn. It will spot that your posts are popular, generating a lot of conversation. As such, your business is more influential and more talked about. Therefore, this helps to improve the business’s organic search engine optimisation if this is done frequently.

 

Keep posting quality content marketing.

Content marketing is an essential part of the SEO process (Google E-EAT), regardless of which business sector you are in, whether you’re a solicitor, estate agent or indeed a dental practice.

You’ll need high-quality content marketing that’s informative and has a high Google E-EAT score.

Therefore, you concentrate on the questions that your customers ask you, such as: “How much does it cost to get my teeth whitened”. When you answer these questions in a way that helps people, they stay engaged with the information your business is offering for an extended period which Google’s Rankbrain will detect, through say much higher dwell times.

Your companies dwell times can be monitored in Google Analytics.

Therefore, this sends positive signals to Google algorithms if you have high dwell times across a lot of your websites pages.

The point we are trying to make here is relatively simple: produce quality content marketing by hiring the right digital marketing company, and you can increase your dental practice’s ranking on Google.

 

How much does dental practice SEO even cost?

This, of course, varies depending on the company you choose. At our agency (Walsh & Partners), organic seo for dental practices would need to start at £1k per month. The reason for this is that dental practices operate in a fiercely competitive business sector, which means we are competing with other marketing companies that offer similar services. However, we often have the edge because the business is run by “Ryan Walsh”, who is widely regarded as one of the best local SEO experts in Cardiff, working for a wide range of leading Welsh businesses currently.

 

Will I need to invest in this process continually?

It depends on how long you want to keep improving your ranking factors. In essence, SEO is a bit like building sand castles as the tide is coming in; it will work, but only as effectively as your investment is made in the process. When not investing, companies will unpick your work, improve it, and then rank higher than you on Google.

To participate in the race, you must pay an agency fee, typically on a monthly basis.

 

Why are backlinks the driver of success?

Backlinks (do-follow and no-follow) are the secret to SEO success; customers often realise this, but the reason why a business might rank number one is simply because the backlinks are so strong. Behind the domain name could be thousands of links (linking domain names), which make the website SEO very effective and strong. This is why companies like ours rank so high on Google.

We don’t have the time to write work; who will do this work for us?

We can do this work for you, do not worry. We have some of the best copywriters and link builders in Cardiff, and we can complete the content marketing work for you.

 

Why should we choose your agency?

Our agency is run by an SEO expert, someone who really and truly knows their stuff; that’s one of the best in the business- not a start-up agency. That’s Ryan Walsh, known as one of the best SEO agencies in the area, simply due to our expertise and the high visibility of the business and mentions on leading SEO websites.

How can we appear higher in the Google Business results?

There are numerous ways we can help your business appear in Google Business results.

That is, we can help write content marketing, gain powerful links, and also advise your business in Cardiff on how to achieve more positive business reviews.

 

What is a schema?

Schema is simply a form of structured language; if you apply it correctly, it helps Googlebot better understand what that page is selling or trying to tell the customer. It can be very effective to mark up the business’s address, to make it crystal clear that your business is based in Cardiff, on a particular road.

 

Why does good dental practice web design matter?

It doesn’t matter if it’s a dental practice or another type of business; the UX of a website has been closely linked to SEO success for an extended period of time.

If the website is fast, well-designed, and simple to use, customers will like it; they will stick around on the website for longer. Google’s algorithm, that is Google RankBrain, will notice that the dwell times are high and that the bounce rate is lower than some of your direct competitors. Because you have better engagement, this can help place your website higher in Google’s organic rankings.

 

Why do many competitors keep writing blog posts?

Writing good blog posts, which are well-written and not generated by AI, but instead written manually, can help improve a business’s organic search engine optimisation. Some widely believe that the world’s top SEO agencies consider Google and other search engines to consistently rank fresher content marketing higher, as it’s deemed more up-to-date, if it also has good links, supporting that work.

Additionally, if your website becomes stale, with outdated information, it won’t rank high in Google’s organic results.

 

How many backlinks do we need?

This depends on the exact strength of your direct competitors’ backlinks; for example, some cities will be much more competitive than others. This means that some other businesses will have more competition, therefore needing stronger SEO to stand out, which in turn requires more links.

 

Why is SEO so expensive?

It doesn’t have to be expensive. When you partner with an agency like Walsh & Partners, the amount of business we can attract can significantly benefit the company. This is why some of our clients have stayed with us for close to a decade now.

Why is SEO more expensive for dental practices than for other types of businesses?

The dental business sector is often one of the most competitive, which means that even more businesses will invest in this type of marketing, resulting in even more intense competition. Therefore, more time needs to be spent to outperform the competition, which is what makes this business sector more expensive than less competitive business sectors.

 

Why choose Walsh & Partners?

Walsh & Partners is one of the best agencies around. We have been around for a long time.

We are therefore not the type of agencies that pop up, think they know everything, and then disappear.

We have been around for a very long time, and we know a great deal about SEO. We are widely considered to be some of the best consultants in this area.

 

Who exactly is Ryan Walsh?

Ryan Walsh is an SEO consultant who was born in Cardiff, South Wales. The agency has now grown 10 years later into one of the best marketing agencies in this area.

 

Why is Ryan considered one of the best SEO consultants around?

Because our work has been linked to and mentioned on Search Engine Land, which is widely considered one of the best resources for learning more for those interested in SEO.