Local SEO scope for dental practices: what an agency should deliver
A line-by-line scope for local dental SEO: Business Profile work, website work and reporting, with what should happen once and what should happen every month.
"Local SEO" covers anything from a one-off profile tidy-up to a year of content and links. Use this scope to see which parts a proposal includes, which it leaves out, and what you should be able to see each month. The reasoning is in the dental SEO guide.
Business Profile work
| Deliverable | What it should cover | When |
|---|---|---|
| Business Profile audit | Categories, services, hours, attributes, photos, duplicates, ownership roles | Month 1, one-off |
| Profile corrections | Fix inaccurate or missing details; remove duplicates through Google's process | Month 1 |
| Posts and photos | Regular updates about treatments, team and practice news | Monthly |
| Review process | A consistent way to ask every patient, and replies that disclose nothing about the patient | Set up once, then monthly |
| Citations | Practice name, address and phone consistent on the directories that matter in your area | Month 1 to 3 |
Collecting and answering reviews overlaps with wider reputation work. For SEO, what matters is a steady flow of genuine reviews from real patients, never selectively asking only happy ones.
Website work
| Deliverable | What it should cover | When |
|---|---|---|
| Technical audit | Indexing, page speed on mobile, broken pages, duplicate pages | Month 1, one-off |
| Technical fixes | The audit findings, in priority order, with who does each (agency, web developer or you) | Months 1 to 3 |
| Treatment pages | One clear page per treatment you want to grow, written for patients and checked against GDC guidance | A stated number per month |
| Location information | How to find you, parking, access, nearby areas you genuinely serve | Once, then kept current |
| Enquiry paths | Click-to-call, booking and forms that work on a phone | Month 1, then tested monthly |
Reporting
| Deliverable | What it should cover | When |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console | Impressions and clicks for treatment and location searches, equal periods compared | Monthly |
| Business Profile | Calls, website visits and direction requests | Monthly |
| Enquiries | Organic enquiries and how many booked, attended and started treatment | Monthly, judged over a quarter |
Using this with a proposal
- Mark each line as included, partly included or missing for every proposal you have.
- Ask what the agency does in month one, and what you will be able to see by the end of it.
- Score the proposals side by side with the SEO proposal checklist, which also flags deal-breakers such as account ownership.