Paid search that buys implant consults, emergency visits and new patient exams on purpose, with each office and each procedure judged on the patients it puts in the chair.
Most dental ad accounts we inherit have the same shape. One campaign, a long list of keywords from cleanings to full-arch, one daily budget, and Google spending most of it on whatever gets clicked most. That is usually hygiene and exam searches, because they are searched constantly. The implant budget ends up paying for cleanings, and the report still looks healthy because clicks and calls went up.
Dental PPC works when the account is built around what each patient is worth to the practice. An emergency patient needs a call answered today. An implant patient clicks several ads over weeks before booking a consult. A new hygiene patient compares insurance and availability. Those are different campaigns with different landing pages, different hours and different budgets, and they are judged on booked patients rather than leads.
What dental Google Ads with us includes
Campaigns split by procedure
Separate campaigns for emergency, implants, aligners, cosmetic and general new patients, each with its own budget so one cannot starve another.
A landing page per campaign
Pages that match the search: cost and financing on the implant page, today's hours on the emergency page, accepted plans on the new patient page.
Call tracking and call review
A tracking number per campaign and office, with calls reviewed so we know which ones were new patients and which were existing patients or vendors.
Offline conversion import
Booked and completed appointments sent back to Google Ads, so bidding learns from patients who showed up, not from form fills.
Search term and negative keyword management
Search terms reviewed every two weeks, with job seekers, students, DIY searches and plans you do not take blocked as they appear.
Budget allocation by office and procedure
Spend moved monthly toward the campaigns and offices with the lowest cost per booked patient, and away from the ones that only produce clicks.
The searches dental ads should buy
The best dental keywords are the ones where the patient has already decided what they need. "Dentist near me" is the biggest term in the category, but it mixes people wanting a cleaning, people checking a current dentist's hours and people price shopping. Procedure and urgency searches are smaller and far more useful, so they get funded first.
Each row below is a separate campaign or ad group, because each one needs different ad copy, a different page and often different hours.
Search, campaign, and the landing page it should reach
The patient searches
Campaign
Landing page
emergency dentist open now
Emergency, scheduled to staffed hours or answering coverage
Emergency page with today's hours and a tap-to-call number
dental implants cost near me
Implants, with the widest radius in the account
Implant page with cost ranges, financing and a consult form
teeth in a day
Full-arch, separate from single-tooth implants
Full-arch page explaining the consult and financing
clear aligners for adults
Aligners and orthodontics
Aligner page with consult booking and monthly payment options
dentist accepting new patients
General new patient, tight radius
New patient page with accepted plans and online booking
dentist that takes delta dental
Insurance terms, only for plans you are in network with
Insurance page listing plans, linked to booking
chipped tooth repair
Cosmetic and same-week repairs
Bonding and veneers page with a short request form
your practice name
Brand, kept separate from everything else
Homepage or the office's location page
How we run dental Google Ads
1 Fix tracking before spending more
Most dental accounts count a click on a phone number, a page view or a two second call as a conversion. Google then optimizes toward those, which is why accounts can report rising conversions while the schedule stays flat.
We set up call tracking per campaign and office, define a conversion as a real new patient call or a completed booking request, and connect the practice management schedule where possible so booked and completed appointments flow back to Google Ads.
Calls under a set duration and calls from existing patients excluded from conversions
Online booking and forms tracked to campaign, keyword and office
Booked and completed appointments imported as offline conversions
Brand campaign conversions reported separately so they do not flatter the rest
2 Build campaigns around procedure value
We rank the practice's procedures by value per chair hour and by capacity, then fund campaigns in that order. A practice with open surgical time and a dentist placing implants funds implants first, even though the searches are a fraction of hygiene searches.
Each campaign gets its own budget, keywords, ads and landing page. Smaller budgets are better spent on two campaigns done properly, usually one high-value procedure and emergency, than on six campaigns that each get too little to learn.
Single-tooth implants and full-arch kept apart, since the patients and case values differ
Exact and phrase match for procedure terms, broad match only with offline conversion data behind it
Performance Max held back until search campaigns have reliable booked-patient data
Example: implant search ad
Dental Implants in Oak Park | Free Parking, Evening Consults
Meet Dr. Shah, see your options and get a written cost estimate. Financing available. Book your consult online.
3 Draw the map by drive time, procedure by procedure
Patients drive a short distance for a cleaning and a much longer one for a full-arch case. One radius for the whole account either wastes money on general searches far from the office or cuts off implant patients willing to travel.
We set location targeting per campaign, use the setting that limits ads to people in or regularly in the area rather than people interested in it, and for DSOs we keep neighboring offices from bidding against each other in overlapping zip codes.
Tight drive-time areas for emergency and general new patient campaigns
Wider areas for implants and full-arch, with copy that acknowledges the drive
Each DSO office assigned its own zip codes so offices do not compete in the same auction
4 Send every click to a page that matches it
A patient who searched implant cost and lands on the homepage has to look for the answer, and most will not. The landing page should repeat the search in its headline, answer cost, financing and insurance plainly, and put the form and the phone number on the first screen of a phone.
Emergency pages need hours for today and a number that rings a person. Aligner and cosmetic pages need consult booking and monthly payment information, because those patients usually compare two or three practices before deciding.
One landing page per campaign, with the office address and map for each location
Forms of three or four fields, with the rest collected by the front desk
Page speed tested on a phone over cellular before any campaign goes live
Example: emergency landing page, first screen
Emergency dental care in Oak Park, today
Open until 7pm tonight and Saturday mornings
Call now: a person answers, not a menu
Broken tooth, lost filling, swelling or pain: tell us what happened and we will tell you how soon we can see you
Most PPO plans accepted
5 Answer the phone the ads paid for
Dental ad money is lost after the click more often than before it. Calls go to voicemail during procedures and at lunch, forms wait until the next morning, and emergency patients call the next office on the list.
We review call recordings and missed call reports with the office, schedule ads to the hours the phones are covered or add answering coverage, and set up an automatic text reply to every form and missed call so no paid lead waits.
Ad scheduling matched to staffed hours, office by office
Missed call text-back on every tracking number
Monthly call review with the front desk lead on booked versus lost calls
6 Move budget toward booked patients every month
With booked patients tracked, the account can be managed on cost per booked patient by procedure and office. Budget moves to whatever is producing patients the practice wants and away from whatever produces only clicks.
We report spend, booked patients and cost per booked patient for each campaign and office, and flag when the problem is outside the account, such as an office whose calls convert poorly or a procedure the schedule cannot absorb.
Monthly budget shifts based on cost per booked patient, not cost per click
Campaigns paused for offices that are booked out, then restarted when capacity opens
Search term reviews every two weeks with new negatives added
Where dental Google Ads usually goes wrong
One campaign for everything
A single campaign with every procedure in it lets Google spend on the cheapest, most clicked searches. High-value procedures need their own campaigns and budgets.
Counting clicks to call as conversions
If a tap on the phone number counts as a conversion, Google optimizes for taps. Conversions should be real new patient calls and bookings.
Paying for clicks nobody can answer
Emergency ads running at night with no answering coverage and no online booking buy clicks that go nowhere. Schedule ads to the hours the practice can respond.
Brand searches hiding weak campaigns
Patients searching the practice name were coming anyway. When brand and non-brand results are blended, a poor implant campaign looks fine.
What to expect and when
The first weeks go to tracking, landing pages and the campaign rebuild. Ads can run during that time, but the early data is mostly about which searches and offices produce real calls.
Booked patients usually start arriving within the first month once pages and tracking are live. Bidding gets more accurate over the following months as booked and completed appointments feed back into the account, and high-value campaigns like implants take longer to judge because consults convert over weeks.
Every month you see spend, booked patients and cost per booked patient by procedure and office, and the budget changes we are making as a result.
What we report on
Cost per booked new patient
By campaign and office. The number every budget decision is based on.
Booked consults by procedure
Whether the implant, aligner and cosmetic campaigns are producing the cases they are funded for.
Qualified call rate
The share of tracked calls that were real new patients, which shows whether targeting and negatives are working.
Missed and unanswered paid calls
Ad spend lost at the front desk, usually the cheapest problem in the account to fix.
Non-brand spend and results
Performance with brand searches separated out, so the account is judged on patients it actually found.
Dental Google Ads, HIPAA and ad policy
Conversion tracking is where dental ads meet HIPAA. Ad tags and analytics stay off pages where patients enter health details, offline conversions are sent without health information attached, and call recordings and forms run on tools that support a Business Associate Agreement. Google's personalized advertising policy also limits remarketing based on health, so we do not build audiences from procedure page visits.
Ad copy follows Google's rules and your state dental board's. No outcome promises, no before and after claims, and specialty terms only where the dentist holds the specialty under state rules. Advertised offers such as a new patient exam price follow state disclosure requirements, and trademarked aligner and implant system names appear in ads only where the practice is entitled to use them.
Questions about dental Google Ads
How much should a dental practice spend on Google Ads?
Enough to fund the campaigns you prioritize properly, and no more than the office can answer and schedule. We set budgets per procedure based on your market's click costs and your capacity, then adjust monthly on cost per booked patient.
Should we bid on "dentist near me"?
Usually after procedure and emergency campaigns are working. The term has huge volume but mixed intent, so it tends to cost more per booked patient. When we do run it, it gets its own campaign and a new patient landing page.
Do you use Performance Max for dental practices?
Only once search campaigns have reliable booked-patient data and brand searches are excluded. Run too early, it tends to spend on people already searching for the practice and report them as new.
Can you run ads for each office in our DSO separately?
Yes. Each office gets its own location targeting, tracking numbers, landing pages and budget line, so you can see cost per booked patient by office and keep neighboring offices out of the same auctions.
Who owns the Google Ads account?
You do. We work inside an account in the practice's name, so the history and data stay with you if you ever stop working with us.
What does dental Google Ads management cost?
It depends on the number of offices and campaigns. We scope the work after a strategy call, and our custom marketing packages start at $2,500 a month.
Should we run Google Ads or SEO?
Ads bring booked patients quickly while SEO builds. Most practices run both, and as organic rankings grow, ad budget moves to the procedures and offices that still need it.
