When it comes to attracting new patients, few channels are as powerful—or as misunderstood—as local search.
Most practice owners assume their marketing company has it covered. They’re paying a monthly fee, someone is “doing SEO,” and yet…when a parent in their community searches “pediatric dentist near me,” the practice is nowhere to be found.
That invisibility is costly. If families can’t discover you online, they’ll book with the practice down the street.
Over the past decade, I’ve audited hundreds of dental practices. Time and again, I find the same five mistakes holding practices back in local SEO. These aren’t just technical slip-ups—they’re barriers to patient flow, production growth, and confidence in your marketing spend.
The good news? You don’t have to be a tech expert to recognize them. With the right questions and a basic awareness, any owner can spot red flags before they cost new patient opportunities.
This article kicks off our new Practice Growth Tips series—a twice-monthly collection of practical insights for pediatric dentists and orthodontists. Each post addresses a common challenge that owners face, offering actionable ways to strengthen patient flow, team alignment, and long-term growth.
Mistake 1: Treating Local SEO Like General Dental Marketing
There’s SEO—and then there’s local SEO.
General SEO aims to rank for broad terms on a national or global level. Local SEO ensures you show up in your community when families search “pediatric dentist near [city]” or “braces near [school district].” That difference matters.
What I often see is agencies applying cookie-cutter SEO tactics that completely overlook the map pack—the set of three local business listings that dominate the top of Google results. For dental practices, the map pack is prime real estate.
Signs your marketing is missing the mark:
You don’t appear in the top three map results for your neighborhood.
Your Google Business Profile is incomplete or hasn’t been updated in months.
Reviews stopped trickling in years ago.
Questions to ask your marketing partner:
Is our Google Business Profile fully optimized and updated regularly?
Do we have a structured system for generating reviews from happy families?
Are our local citations managed consistently across platforms?
2025 Trend to Note: Google now places extra weight on review recency and authenticity. Ten recent reviews from real families are more valuable than 200 that are years old.
Mistake 2: Optimizing for Keywords Instead of Topics
Many agencies still act like it’s 2012: they pick a keyword (“dentist”) and claim victory.
But search engines have matured. Success today comes from building topical authority—showing Google (and parents) that you cover the questions, treatments, and neighborhoods families care about.
Signs of keyword-only thinking:
You rank for generic terms but not for treatments + locations (e.g., “Invisalign in Midtown Atlanta”).
Your website lumps all services onto a single “Services” page.
Blog posts read like filler content—nothing a parent would actually want to read.
Questions to ask:
Are we building dedicated content around treatments and neighborhoods?
Do we connect our content with internal links, FAQs, and patient questions?
Are we tracking which local topics drive appointment requests?
2025 Trend to Note: With Google’s AI-driven Search Generative Experience (SGE), content depth matters more than ever. Practices with clear, structured content are more likely to surface in AI-powered summaries—giving them visibility before the traditional map pack results.
Mistake 3: Ignoring Technical Dental SEO
A sleek website doesn’t mean a healthy one.
If your site loads slowly, isn’t mobile-friendly, or confuses Google’s crawlers, your visibility will suffer—no matter how pretty the design looks.
Unfortunately, many agencies focus on design at the expense of technical health.
Warning signs:
Slow page load times, especially on mobile.
Duplicate or missing meta titles and descriptions.
Broken links or outdated sitemaps.
No schema markup (structured data) to help Google understand your services.
Questions to ask:
Are we running regular technical audits with tools like SEMrush?
Has our sitemap been submitted and updated in Google Search Console?
Are we using schema markup for local business, services, and reviews?
2025 Trend to Note: Mobile-first indexing and Core Web Vitals are non-negotiable. Parents searching “near me” are almost always on mobile, and Google now rewards sites that are lightning-fast, responsive, and friction-free.
Mistake 4: Publishing Thin, Generic, or Outdated Content
Google relies on content to understand your practice. Families rely on content to decide if you’re the right fit.
Yet many practices are held back by websites filled with cookie-cutter copy. Service pages are skeletal, blog posts are recycled across dozens of practices, and the site barely mentions the local community.
Signs of weak content:
Bare-bones descriptions of services like orthodontics or sedation.
No mention of local neighborhoods, schools, or landmarks.
A blog that hasn’t been updated in years—or worse, is filled with templated articles.
Questions to ask:
Does our website reflect our unique practice voice and patient community?
Are we regularly adding fresh, original posts?
Do our service pages provide enough depth to answer real patient questions?
2025 Trend to Note: Google favors hyperlocal content. Pages tied to neighborhoods, schools, and community events now outperform generic “city-level” copy.
Mistake 5: Accepting Vague or Nonexistent Reporting
If you’re paying for marketing but can’t see how it impacts new patient growth, you’re in the dark.
One of the most common complaints I hear from owners is, “We get a report every month, but I have no idea what it means—or if we’re actually improving.”
Red flags:
Reports filled with charts but no clear explanation.
No visibility into top-performing pages or keywords.
No access to Google Analytics or Search Console (the agency owns them instead).
Questions to ask:
Do I own my practice’s Google accounts?
What are our top traffic sources and best-performing pages?
How are appointment requests from search being tracked?
2025 Trend to Note: It’s no longer enough to track traffic—you need to track patient attribution. That means connecting search activity directly to appointment bookings.
The Bottom Line
Local SEO isn’t guesswork—it’s a system. And like any system, it needs to be built correctly and maintained consistently.
As a practice owner, you don’t need to know every technical detail. But you do need to spot the warning signs, ask the right questions, and ensure your marketing partner is delivering more than buzzwords.
When local SEO works, the results are tangible: stronger new patient flow, greater visibility in your community, and confidence that your marketing spend is fueling practice growth.