Dental SEO is sold under a lot of names, at prices that are hard to compare. We publish ours, so you can see what the work costs and what it covers. Some of what gets sold to clinics is worth skipping, because it doesn't bring in patients or because Ontario's dental college doesn't allow it.

What dental SEO costs with us

Most clinics start with Get found locally. It's $750 a month, three-month minimum, billed monthly. Each week we post to your Google Business Profile, reply to every review, and check your services, hours and categories against your website. We track where you show in the map pack every week, and you get a written report and a call every month.

SEO + AI Visibility is $1,500 a month, six-month minimum. It covers everything in Get found locally, plus a page for each treatment and each area you really serve, citations that match your listing, technical SEO, and a weekly check of what ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews say about dentists in your city.

If your site works on a phone and has a page for each treatment, you don't need a new one. If every treatment shares one page, the website comes first: the Website build is $5,000 once, fixed price, for up to 15 pages, paid half to start and half at launch. Prices are in Canadian dollars, before tax. Our page on dental SEO and websites for clinics shows how the three fit together.

What should set the price

Whoever you hire, a fair price follows the amount of work, and three things decide how much work there is.

  • How many treatments and locations need a page of their own, each written within the College's rules.
  • How often someone works on your Google profile. Review replies, hours and services are weekly jobs.
  • Whether your site can hold the pages, or has to be rebuilt first.

One thing shouldn't set the price: how many new patients you get. The College's advertising advisory tells dentists not to take part in advertising that results in payments to a third party tied to the amount of business a campaign brings in, so check with the College before you sign a pay-per-new-patient deal. We charge a flat monthly fee.

What a clinic can skip

Testimonial pages and patient story videos

The Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) bans testimonials in dental advertising, and its advisory counts a clinic's website as advertising. The professional misconduct regulation under the Dentistry Act also rules out information that "can only be verified by a person's personal feelings, beliefs, opinions or interpretations." A page of glowing patient quotes, or a package that films patient stories, is money spent on something you can't publish.

Google reviews are less clear, because the rules don't mention them. Reviews that patients post on Google are their own words on Google's site, but whether copying them onto your website or embedding a reviews widget counts as a testimonial isn't spelled out. The College does give "#1 rated" as an example of a superiority claim. Ask its practice advisory service before you put reviews or star ratings on your own site.

"Best", "#1" and "specialist" pages

Pages built around searches like "best dentist in Toronto" or "implant specialist" are hard to write in Ontario. The College's rules forbid comparisons with other practices and words suggesting superiority, such as "state of the art" or "cutting edge". Only a dentist with a specialty certificate from the College can claim to be a specialist, and only in that specialty, such as orthodontics or periodontics. The College also says a dentist may not describe themselves as a "cosmetic dentist" or "implant specialist".

You can still have a page about implants or cosmetic work, because the College lets dentists list the services they provide. Any ad that mentions a treatment has to say whether the dentist is a general practitioner or a specialist, and in which specialty, so every treatment page we write says who provides it.

Giveaways and rewards for reviews

Contests, draws and free products or services are on the College's list of things to leave out of advertising. Google separately forbids offering anything for a review, and asking only happy patients, so a "free whitening for a five-star review" offer breaks both sets of rules. Google does allow asking every patient for an honest review, if you offer nothing in return and don't tell them what to write.

When you reply to a review, leave the treatment out. The College describes a dentist who answered a bad review with photos of the patient's mouth. The patient had only agreed to the photos appearing on the clinic's website.

Bought links and pages for cities you don't serve

If a quote includes a package of links, ask where they come from: Google's spam policies list buying links for ranking purposes as link spam. A neighbourhood clinic also doesn't need a page for every city in the province, only for the areas it serves, each with something true and local on it.

Before-and-after galleries as an SEO tactic

The advertising advisory doesn't ban before-and-after photos, but the College treats a patient's image as personal health information. Each photo needs consent in advance, confirmed in writing after the patient has seen it and recorded in their file, and the patient can withdraw it at any time. A gallery also has to stay clear of the rule against ads that create expectations of favourable results. That's a lot of paperwork per photo, and most clinics can leave the gallery out.

Check with the College before an "emergency dentist" page

Ontario's misconduct regulation limits the designation "dental emergency service", or any other designation indicating emergency dental care, to a service with a dentist present at least 16 hours a day and on call for the other eight, or one operated under the sponsorship of a component society of the Ontario Dental Association. The regulation doesn't say whether a page about same-day emergency appointments counts, so ask the College before you build one.

Outside Ontario, each province has its own dental regulator and its own rules. We check yours before we write anything.

Where to start

The free visibility check shows which clinics get named when someone asks for a dentist in your city, and whether your website or your Google profile is holding you back. Aroon reviews it and emails it to you, with no sales call. For more on the plans, read what local SEO costs per month or see what Google Business Profile management covers.

Questions owners ask

How much does dental SEO cost per month?

With us, $750 a month for Get found locally, which manages your Google Business Profile and reviews, or $1,500 a month for SEO + AI Visibility, which adds treatment pages, citations, AI search and technical SEO. A new website is $5,000 once, fixed price, for up to 15 pages. Prices are in Canadian dollars, before tax.

Can an Ontario dental clinic put patient testimonials on its website?

No. The RCDSO's advertising advisory bans testimonials, and it counts a clinic's website as advertising. Whether showing Google reviews on your site counts as a testimonial isn't spelled out, so ask the College before you add them.

Is pay-per-new-patient dental marketing allowed?

Check with the College first. Its advertising advisory tells dentists not to take part in advertising that results in payments to a third party tied to the amount of business a campaign brings in. We charge a flat monthly fee instead.

How long before new patients find us?

Profile fixes can show in the map pack within weeks. Rankings and AI answers usually take months. Every monthly report shows where you appear for your main searches.