Dental SEO for WordPress practices

Pages every dentists site needs

• Treatment pages. One page each for implants, crowns, whitening, aligners, root canals and the other treatments you offer. People search by treatment, and a combined "Services" page cannot match that many queries.
• Emergency dentistry page. Toothache and broken-tooth searches are urgent and often late in the day. State what counts as an emergency, your same-day policy, and after-hours instructions.
• Dentist profile pages. A page per dentist with degrees, licensing, memberships and years in practice. This is the evidence behind every treatment page.
• Insurance and payment page. Which plans you accept, whether you are in network, and financing options. It answers the question that most often stops a booking.
• New patient page. What happens at the first visit, forms, and how long it takes. It reduces no-shows and answers the questions people type into search.

Treatment pages that show expertise

Each treatment page should answer what a patient actually wants to know before booking: who it suits, what the appointments involve, how long it takes, how much discomfort to expect, what it typically costs and what the alternatives are. Name the dentist who performs it and link to their profile.

Put a byline or a "Clinically reviewed by Dr. Priya Shah, DDS" line on anything medical, with the date it was last checked. Avoid promises such as "pain-free" or "guaranteed results"; they undermine trust and may break your professional body's advertising rules. Before-and-after photos help if they are your own patients, used with consent, and described in alt text. See E-E-A-T for what reviewers look for.

Reviews without breaking privacy rules

Reviews carry a lot of weight in local rankings and in whether someone calls. Ask every satisfied patient, send a direct link to your Google review form, and reply to reviews regularly.

The reply is where dental practices get into trouble. In the US, a reply that confirms someone is a patient or mentions their treatment can be a HIPAA violation, even if the reviewer shared the details first. Keep replies general ("Thank you for the kind words, we're glad you felt welcome") and move complaints offline. On your own site, show testimonials as plain text; self-serving review markup on a LocalBusiness is not eligible for stars in Google.

Dentist schema in WordPress

Use the Dentist type, which is both a LocalBusiness and a MedicalBusiness in schema.org, with the address, phone, hours and coordinates matching your Business Profile. For each clinician, a Person with jobTitle, alumniOf and hasCredential on their profile page connects the treatment pages to a real, qualified human.

In Hydrogen SEO, set the practice details once on Hydrogen SEO > Schema as Local Business and show it site-wide. A multi-location group should give each office its own page and add Local Business in that page's SEO Settings sheet, which replaces the site-wide entry there. Changing the @type to Dentist takes a small hydrogen_seo_schemas filter.

Dentist schema example

A starting point for your site. Replace every value with your own, and only mark up what is visible on the page.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dentist",
  "@id": "https://example.com/#practice",
  "name": "Maple Grove Family Dental",
  "url": "https://example.com/",
  "telephone": "+1-614-555-0107",
  "image": "https://example.com/images/reception.jpg",
  "priceRange": "$$",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "2200 Maple Grove Ave, Suite 3",
    "addressLocality": "Columbus",
    "addressRegion": "OH",
    "postalCode": "43221",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "geo": {
    "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
    "latitude": 40.01841,
    "longitude": -83.06977
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": [
        "Monday",
        "Tuesday",
        "Wednesday",
        "Thursday"
      ],
      "opens": "08:00",
      "closes": "17:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Friday",
      "opens": "08:00",
      "closes": "13:00"
    }
  ],
  "employee": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Dr. Priya Shah",
    "jobTitle": "Dentist",
    "hasCredential": {
      "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",
      "credentialCategory": "degree",
      "name": "Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS)"
    }
  }
}

Checklist

• Set the Business Profile primary category to Dentist, or a specialty such as Orthodontist
• Write one page per treatment instead of a single services list
• Add a named clinical reviewer and review date to treatment pages
• Publish a profile page for every dentist with credentials
• State the insurance plans you accept in text, not a logo strip
• Build an emergency dentistry page with after-hours instructions
• Reply to reviews without confirming the reviewer is a patient
• Remove "painless" and "guaranteed" claims from service copy
• Give each office in a group its own page and Local Business entry
• Keep the practice phone number identical across site and directories