Almost every SEO guide written for dentists in Australia contains advice that could get the practice fined.
The advice is usually some version of “embed your Google reviews on your homepage as social proof”. For a plumber, that is the single best thing you can do. For a dentist, it is a breach of the National Law.
Section 133 of the National Law prohibits the use of testimonials in advertising a regulated health service, and AHPRA treats patient reviews about clinical care as testimonials. Penalties reach $30,000 per breach for individuals and $60,000 for businesses, on top of a referral to your board.
So dental SEO is not general SEO with the word “dental” swapped in. The highest leverage tactic in local search is off the table, and you have to win with the ones that remain. This guide covers how.
The compliance rule you have to get right first
The distinction that matters is who controls the platform.
What you can do. Patients can leave reviews on Google, and you can ask them to. AHPRA does not hold practitioners responsible for unsolicited reviews on third party sites they do not control. Those reviews still count toward your Google Business Profile ranking, which means the map pack remains fully available to you.
What you cannot do. The moment you copy a clinical review onto your own website, put it in an ad, screenshot it for Instagram, or build a “Testimonials” page from it, it becomes advertising you control and section 133 applies.
The practical version:
|
Action |
Status |
|
Patients leaving reviews on Google |
Allowed |
|
Asking patients to leave a Google review |
Generally allowed, keep the ask neutral |
|
Reviews appearing in your Google Business Profile |
Allowed |
|
Embedding a Google review widget on your website |
Not allowed |
|
Screenshotting reviews for social posts |
Not allowed |
|
A testimonials page on your site |
Not allowed |
|
Before and after photos |
Heavily restricted, strict conditions apply |
|
“Painless”, “best dentist”, “guaranteed results” |
Not allowed |
Keep the review request neutral. Asking patients to share feedback is fine. Steering them toward praising the clinical outcome, or offering anything in return, is not.
This is a summary, not legal advice, and the guidelines are updated periodically. Check the current position on the AHPRA advertising hub and with your indemnity insurer before you publish anything you are unsure about.
Where dental search demand actually sits
|
Search term |
Monthly searches (AU) |
Difficulty |
|
dentist near me |
31,000 |
High |
|
emergency dentist |
1,900 |
Very low |
|
seo for dentists |
900 |
Very low |
|
dental implants cost |
700 |
Very low |
Two things stand out.
“Dentist near me” is a map pack query, not a page you can rank. At 31,000 monthly searches it is tempting, but Google resolves it through local results. You win it through your Google Business Profile, not by writing a page.
The winnable, high value terms are emergency and cost queries. “Emergency dentist” draws 1,900 monthly searches at almost no difficulty. “Dental implants cost” draws 700, also at near zero difficulty, and attaches to treatment worth several thousand dollars.
Since you cannot use reviews, use these instead
Trust has to come from somewhere. With testimonials unavailable, these carry the weight:
Practitioner profiles that are genuinely detailed. One page per dentist, with qualifications, AHPRA registration number, year registered, university, areas of clinical interest, professional memberships, and continuing education. This is the strongest E-E-A-T signal available to a practice, and it is fully compliant because it is factual information about the practitioner rather than a patient opinion.
Your Google Business Profile rating, on Google. You cannot embed it, but it is doing the work in the map pack where most patients are looking anyway.
Factual practice information. Years established, number of practitioners, technology you use, languages spoken, whether you have on site parking, wheelchair access, and after hours availability. Specific facts build more confidence than adjectives.
Clear fee information. Most dental sites hide pricing entirely, which drives patients to ring three practices for quotes. Publishing ranges for common treatments (“dental implants generally run $4,500 to $6,500 per tooth depending on whether a bone graft is needed”) is compliant, useful, and captures the cost searches your competitors ignore.
Health fund arrangements. Which funds you have preferred provider status with, whether you do HICAPS on the spot, and how the Child Dental Benefits Schedule works if you accept it. This is genuinely what patients want to know.
The pages a dental practice should build
Most dental websites have a single “Services” page listing twenty treatments in one line each. That page ranks for nothing.
Build these instead, in order:
- Emergency dentist page. Highest intent, lowest competition. Cover the specific situations: knocked out tooth, broken tooth, severe toothache, lost filling, abscess, dental trauma in children. For each, give what to do right now before they reach you. That advice is genuinely useful, it is what featured snippets and AI answers pull from, and it builds trust in the two minutes before someone calls.
- One page per major treatment. Dental implants, root canal, wisdom teeth removal, orthodontics and clear aligners, crowns and bridges, veneers, children’s dentistry. Each page needs what the treatment involves, how long it takes, what recovery looks like, a fee range, and what determines the price.
- Cost pages for high value treatments. “Dental implants cost” style queries convert well because the patient has moved from wondering to planning.
- New patient page. What happens at a first appointment, what to bring, how long it takes, how billing works. Reduces the friction that stops people booking.
- Practitioner profiles. One per dentist, as above.
- Suburb pages, only for the two or three areas you genuinely draw from.
Our guide to keyword mapping covers assigning one primary term per page so they do not compete with each other, and our SEO checklist covers the on page work each one needs.
Google Business Profile is where dental patients actually decide
For a practice, the profile matters more than the website in the first six months.
- Primary category should be “Dentist”, with secondary categories for genuine specialisations like “Orthodontist” or “Dental implants periodontist” only if accurate.
- Hours must be exact, including whether you take emergency appointments outside them.
- Photos of the practice, the team and the equipment. Not stock images of models with unnaturally white teeth. No clinical before and after images here, given the restrictions.
- Services list filled out completely with each treatment.
- Appointment link connected to your booking system, because a patient who can book at 10pm without calling will.
- Q&A section seeded with real questions and answered by the practice.
Our Google Business Profile optimisation checklist covers the full setup, and how Google’s local search algorithm works explains the map pack ranking factors.
Schema markup for dental practices
Use the Dentist type. Add Physician or MedicalBusiness properties where relevant, and mark up each practitioner separately.
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Dentist”,
“name”: “Your Dental Practice”,
“telephone”: “+61-3-XXXX-XXXX”,
“address”: {
“@type”: “PostalAddress”,
“streetAddress”: “123 Example St”,
“addressLocality”: “Camberwell”,
“addressRegion”: “VIC”,
“postalCode”: “3124”,
“addressCountry”: “AU”
},
“medicalSpecialty”: “Dentistry”,
“availableService”: [
{ “@type”: “MedicalProcedure”, “name”: “Dental Implants” },
{ “@type”: “MedicalProcedure”, “name”: “Root Canal Treatment” }
],
“employee”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Dr Example Name”,
“jobTitle”: “Principal Dentist”
}
}
Do not add AggregateRating markup. Beyond Google’s rules against self serving review markup, publishing your patient rating in your own site’s code is exactly the kind of testimonial use section 133 covers.
Structured data is also increasingly how AI generated answers identify what a practice offers, which our comparison of GEO and SEO covers in more detail. For the wider technical setup, see our guide to technical SEO.
What about paid ads
Dental keywords are competitive on price but the compliance rules are identical. Everything above applies to ad copy: no testimonials, no superlatives, no guarantees, no “painless”.
Where ads earn their place is emergency and high value treatment terms, where a patient will book the same day. Send the traffic to a dedicated page rather than the homepage. Our guides to Google Ads costs in Australia and landing page development cover the mechanics.
Frequently asked questions
Can dentists in Australia use patient testimonials?
Not in advertising you control. Section 133 of the National Law prohibits testimonials about clinical aspects of care in advertising a regulated health service. Reviews left independently on Google are treated differently because you do not control that platform.
Can I ask patients for Google reviews?
Generally yes, provided the request is neutral and nothing is offered in return. What you cannot do is republish those reviews in your own marketing.
Can dentists use before and after photos?
Only under strict conditions, and the rules are detailed enough that you should check the current AHPRA guidance before publishing any. Many practices decide the risk is not worth it.
What is the best keyword for a dental practice to target?
Emergency dentist terms and treatment cost terms. Both have real volume, low competition, and patients who are ready to book. “Dentist near me” is won through your Google Business Profile rather than a page.
How long does dental SEO take?
Google Business Profile improvements can show within four to eight weeks. Treatment pages generally take four to six months to rank, longer in competitive metro areas.
Where to start
Audit your existing website for compliance before you do anything else. If there is a testimonials page, an embedded review widget, or the word “painless” anywhere, that is the first fix and it is urgent.
Then build the emergency page and one cost page for your highest value treatment. Those two typically outperform a year of unfocused effort.
Our SEO and local SEO teams work with Australian practices inside these constraints. Get in touch for a compliance and visibility review of your current site.
