Four ways Canberrans look for a dentist
Dental searches are local and often time-sensitive. One practice can be found through very different queries, so a single services page rarely does every job. Good local SEO starts by separating these search types.
By suburb or town centre
People pair the word dentist with a suburb or district. Your pages and profiles must make your location and service area unmistakable.
By treatment
Searches for implants, braces, wisdom teeth or children's dentistry each need a page that explains that treatment in plain language.
By urgency
A toothache search rewards visible opening hours, a tap-to-call number and a page built for someone in pain.
By convenience
Through Healthdirect's Find a health service tool, patients can look up a dentist and filter by preferences like free parking, so directory details need to be complete.
Ahpra's advertising rules come before any keyword
Dentistry sits among the 16 professions that Ahpra regulates nationally, so the National Law's advertising rules cover your website, social media and listings. Advertising cannot be false or misleading, or likely to mislead. A claim about treatment outcomes needs acceptable evidence, and omitting key details or playing down risk can mislead too.
Testimonials are prohibited, and Ahpra's guidelines treat as testimonials any endorsement or positive remark about the clinical aspects of care. Reviews that patients leave on a review platform are treated differently, and reviews that only comment on service or communication are not testimonials. Any gift, discount or free offer must state its terms and conditions.
The advertiser is whoever controls or authorises the content, and that includes a marketing agency. Ahpra says advertisers must check content produced by others for them. Ahpra also lists the penalty: a maximum of $60,000 for each offence by an individual, or $120,000 where a body corporate is responsible, since a 2022 amendment. We draft inside these rules, but the practice owner approves every claim before it goes live.
Wording to check before a dental page goes live
Dental copy often drifts into phrases that read as ordinary marketing but fall foul of the rules. This table sets out the wording we flag most and a safer way to say the same thing. It is a working checklist, not legal advice.
| Wording | Why it is a risk | Safer approach |
|---|---|---|
| Our dentist specialises in braces | Ahpra says words like specialist or specialises in are likely to mislead unless the dentist holds specialist registration | Check the register first. A general dentist can say they have substantial experience in braces, if that is true |
| Painless, safe or risk free | Advertising that minimises or under-represents the risk of a treatment can mislead | Describe what the visit involves, the usual recovery and the risks, in plain language |
| The best dentist in Canberra | Ahpra lists claims of a superior health service among things that can mislead | Describe services, hours and who provides them, and let patients judge |
| Free check-up with whitening | An offer must spell out its conditions plainly, or link to them where they are easy to find | Put the conditions beside the offer, or link to a page that is easy to find |
| Before and after photos of veneers | Ahpra's cosmetic procedure guidance names dental veneers and requires images of actual patients who had the procedure | Follow that guidance in full, or leave outcome images off the site |
| Patient quote about how treatment went | A favourable comment on the clinical side of care is a testimonial, which the National Law prohibits | Leave it out of your own marketing. Service-only comments on a review platform are treated differently |
What we adjust on a dental website
Most dental sites we would review need work in the same five places. The table shows where we look and why it matters to a patient deciding whom to call.
| Area | What we look at | Why patients care |
|---|---|---|
| Treatment pages | One page per treatment, with plain language, risks and who performs it | Matches treatment searches and keeps claims supportable |
| Location signals | Address, service area, parking and public transport details | Supports searches tied to a suburb or town centre |
| Dentist profiles | Registration details, qualifications and approved titles | Lets patients see who they will be treated by |
| Contact and booking | Click-to-call, booking links and hours that work on a phone | Keeps urgent searchers from leaving |
| Technical health | Speed, mobile layout, indexing and structured data | Lets search engines read and trust the site |
Problems we often find on dental sites
These are patterns common to practice websites in general, and each one is fixable without touching a clinical claim.
- One page for every treatment: A services page that squeezes ten treatments into short paragraphs cannot compete for any of them.
- Wording that promises too much: Phrases such as painless or guaranteed results can mislead patients and put the practice at risk under the National Law.
- Mismatched listings: Different phone numbers or addresses across directories confuse patients and search engines alike.
- Copied location pages: Dental groups that reuse one block of text across every practice weaken each location page.
- Silent review profiles: Never replying shows patients nothing about how you treat them. Keep any reply short and polite, and never mention a patient's treatment in it.
How an engagement with a dental practice runs
The process is short and the practice stays in control of what is published.
- ReviewWe review your listings, your Google Business Profile and the site itself, then write up what to fix first in plain English. This is the free SEO audit.
- PlanTogether we choose which treatments and which parts of Canberra matter most to the practice.
- BuildWe fix technical problems and write or restructure pages. You read and approve every claim before publication.
- ReportWe report on visibility, calls and enquiries in plain English, then adjust the plan as the data comes in.
What we do and what we do not do
Clear boundaries protect the practice's registration as well as its rankings.
We do
- Write treatment pages that explain procedures without promising outcomes
- Keep names, addresses and hours identical everywhere
- Flag any title or offer wording to check against Ahpra's guidelines
- Explain in plain English what we changed and why
We do not
- Write patient stories about treatment results
- Buy, write or trade reviews
- Describe anyone as a specialist without checking the register
- Promise a ranking or a number of new patients
Timelines, cost and where to start
Local search gains build over months, not weeks. Google also says content on health topics needs to be highly accurate and in line with expert consensus, so pages the practice's own dentists check suit both Google and the regulator. How quickly depends on how crowded your suburb is, how old and healthy your site is, and how much content needs rewriting. Practices serving Tuggeranong or Belconnen often face several competing dentists around each town centre, so we look at the actual results page before suggesting a plan.
Pricing is a custom quote because a one-chair practice and a five-location group need different work. You can read how we think about it on the pricing page, or start with a SEO audit. For the wider picture, see our other industry pages.
Frequently asked questions
Can a dentist show patient reviews on their own website?
Ahpra's guidelines prohibit testimonials, meaning positive statements about clinical care, in your advertising. Patients remain free to post reviews on platforms such as Google. Reviews that only describe service or communication are not treated as testimonials. The line is fine, so get advice from your indemnity insurer before copying any review text onto your site.
Can our practice call a dentist a specialist?
Only if that dentist is registered in a recognised specialty. The Dental Board lists 13, and Ahpra's public register shows each dentist's specialties. Descriptions that imply a specialty without that registration are likely to mislead, so general dentists with a special interest should describe their interest plainly.
Can we show before and after photos of veneers or whitening?
Take care. Ahpra's guidance on higher-risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures names dental veneers. It bans testimonials, and requires images of actual patients who had the procedure being advertised. The first image shown should be the before photo or a combined image. If the practice cannot meet all of that, we leave outcome images out.
Do you write the treatment pages?
Yes. We write them in plain language and set out what the treatment is, who provides it and what to ask at the appointment. The dentist reviews and approves each page. We do not write outcome promises, and we leave clinical detail to the clinicians.
Can we advertise a free check-up or whitening discount?
You can, but Ahpra's guidelines say any gift, discount or inducement must state its terms and conditions. Where space is tight, the advertisement should point to where they can be found. We build a short terms section into the offer page.
How long before we see more enquiries?
It varies. A broken profile or missing treatment page can be fixed and start to show results in a matter of weeks. Busy suburb searches are slower to win and often take a few months. Google decides rankings and nobody outside it controls them, so we do not guarantee any.
We have more than one practice. Can you handle all locations?
Yes. Each location needs its own page and profile with its own team, hours and transport details, rather than one copied block. We plan the locations together so they support each other instead of competing.
Sources and further reading
- Ahpra: Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service: Testimonials, misleading advertising, offers, advertiser responsibility, specialist titles, penalties
- Ahpra: Register of practitioners: The 16 nationally regulated professions, including dental practice, and the public register
- Dental Board of Australia: Specialist registration: The 13 recognised dental specialties
- Healthdirect: Find a health service (Australian Government Department of Health): Searching for a dentist and filtering by preferences
- Ahpra: Advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures: Dental veneers named; testimonial ban; before and after image requirements
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: Higher weight on accuracy for health topics; trust as the most important quality signal