Most advice about SEO for dentists was written for businesses that can publish a happy customer quote. Patient success stories on the homepage, five-star reviews in a slider, before-and-after galleries, a “book before the end of the month” offer. Your practice advertises under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, and several of those standard moves sit on the wrong side of it. You can still market the practice. You just have to work in a particular order, with the boundary drawn before the copy is written.
Here is that order. One thing up front: this is a plain-English summary of what the published guidelines say, with links so you can read the source yourself. AHPRA states it cannot advise on your advertising or pre-approve it, and points advertisers to their professional association, an independent legal adviser or their indemnity insurer. So treat what follows as general information, and get your own advice on specific wording.
Your website is advertising
AHPRA defines advertising as “all forms of verbal, printed or electronic public communication that promotes a regulated health service provider to attract a person to the provider”, and the requirements bind practitioners, non-practitioners and businesses alike (Summary of the advertising requirements).
AHPRA has never published anything about SEO, keywords or Google Business Profiles, so be sceptical of anyone citing an “AHPRA rule for SEO”. There isn’t one. What there is, and this is our reading rather than the regulator’s words about search, is a definition broad enough to cover your treatment pages, your profile text and your social posts. The five prohibitions in section 133 of the National Law apply to all of them. Advertising must not:
- be false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be misleading or deceptive
- offer a gift, discount or other inducement without stating the terms and conditions of the offer
- use testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business
- create an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment
- directly or indirectly encourage the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services
Then there is the question of who carries the obligation. AHPRA puts it plainly: “Advertisers are responsible for their advertising, so they need to check any content produced by others on their behalf and ensure it is compliant.” Its advertising FAQ extends that to anyone you direct to draft or publish content, “including a third party, staff member or marketing agency”. Handing your website to an agency does not hand over the responsibility. Penalties run to $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate (Advertising and the law), though enforcement is risk-based and lower-risk matters usually start with a letter asking you to amend.
Start with your Google Business Profile
For a local practice, in our experience this is the highest-value hour you will spend on search. Google’s documentation says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity”, and, worth repeating to anyone selling you a shortcut, that “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google” (Tips to improve your local ranking).
So verify the profile, complete the address, hours, categories and attributes, and keep the photos current. Then read Google’s guidelines for representing your business, because two of them apply directly to a dental practice. Your profile name must be the real-world name of the practice, so appending “Emergency Dentist Richmond” to chase keywords breaches the naming rules and can get the profile suspended. And the description cannot focus on promotions or prices, or carry links of any kind.
One profile, or one per dentist?
Google names dentists explicitly as individual practitioners: the organisation holds a profile for the location, and each public-facing practitioner may have a separate profile, titled with only the practitioner’s name. A practitioner should not hold several profiles for different areas of work. In a practice with three or four dentists, this structure is worth settling before any on-page work.
Reviews: two rulebooks at once
Here is where a dental practice differs from the cafe next door. Two regulators are involved, and they govern different things.
Google’s content policy governs how you ask. Businesses may encourage reviews that reflect a genuine experience, but must not offer payment or free goods in exchange for one, discourage negative reviews, selectively solicit positive ones, or request that specific content be included.
AHPRA governs what you then do with them. The National Law does not allow testimonials in advertising, and a testimonial is a positive statement about the clinical aspects of a service. AHPRA’s testimonial tool narrows that to three triggers: the symptom or reason for seeking treatment, the diagnosis or treatment provided, and the outcome or the practitioner’s skills and experience.
So some of your reviews can be used in advertising and some cannot. AHPRA states that comments about customer service or communication style, with no clinical reference, are not testimonials and may be used. “The reception team found me an appointment the same day and explained the costs up front” sits on one side; a quote about a patient’s pain being gone sits on the other. Two further points trip people up. You are responsible for reviews on surfaces you control, including a reviews function on your own social page, which may mean disabling it. And editing reviews so only the favourable parts remain is itself a misleading-advertising risk. Patients can say what they like on platforms you do not control, but AHPRA warns advertisers to take care engaging with third-party reviews, since sharing a clinical comment may count as advertising.
When a Patient Praises Their Treatment in a Google Review
Your Google Business Profile is your practice’s asset: you control the name, hours, photos and posts. The reviews on it are a different matter. AHPRA treats content as yours where you publish or authorise it, or where there is “a mechanism for the advertiser to modify or remove content published by an unrelated publisher” (AHPRA, Testimonial tool). Google gives you no such mechanism: you can reply, edit your reply, or report a review that breaches Google’s own review policies, but you cannot edit, delete or switch reviews off (Google Business Profile Help). So a review praising how a treatment turned out is a testimonial you did not author and cannot take down. AHPRA says advertisers “do not have to remove or try to remove a review on a website or in social media over which they do not have control”, and the Boards “do not expect you to monitor … forums you do not control” (AHPRA, Advertising FAQ).
Your real exposure is what you do next. AHPRA cautions that advertisers “should take care if they choose to engage with reviews on third-party websites as this may be considered using a testimonial” (AHPRA, Testimonial tool). In practice: thank the reviewer without repeating or endorsing the clinical claim, keep it off your own website and social channels, and never ask patients for reviews about their results. If a reply needs real detail, take it to a phone call or email. A Facebook reviews tab, by contrast, can be switched off — so what sits there is within your control, and your responsibility.
What your treatment pages can claim
Treatment pages are where a practice makes its case for each service, and where most of the advertising risk sits. The guidelines ask that advertising be clear, honest and accurate, that claims be supported by acceptable evidence, and that where you list conditions you treat or help, you make clear how the treatment helps each one. Risks must be stated accurately, since underplaying them can mislead. Comparisons on outcomes or prices need evidence behind them, and a published price should be the total price, not an opening consultation fee.
Watch the wording too. “Specialises in” is risky unless the practitioner holds specialist registration, because it may lead the public to believe they do. Where “Dr” is used for a practitioner who is not a medical practitioner, state the profession alongside it, as in Dr Jones (dentist). AHPRA’s acceptable evidence page lists anecdotal evidence based on observations in practice as generally not acceptable support for a claim, which is what most “our patients love it” copy rests on.
Two related traps. Before-and-after images are not banned outright, but the guidelines require they be genuine and unedited and that it is clear how the treatment caused the result shown. And urgency phrasing such as “don’t delay” may be unlawful where it is tied to unsubstantiated claims that someone’s health will suffer if they do not act.
Then fix the technical layer
Once the words are safe, the plumbing matters. Google’s starter guide says plainly that “there are no secrets here that’ll automatically rank your site first”, and that changes can take hours or months to show. The basics hold: descriptive URLs, pages Google can crawl and render, HTTPS, a site that works on a phone, no intrusive pop-ups. The detail is in our guide to technical SEO, and the local-search fundamentals are in our local SEO guide for Melbourne businesses. If the topic is new, start with our plain-English guide to SEO.
Plan for one more thing before you start. Search work is not a job you finish: in our experience, once the work stops, rankings slide away gradually rather than falling off a cliff. A practice is better off treating it as a standing monthly commitment with a named owner, covering the pages already published as well as new ones.
Common questions
Can a dental practice put Google reviews on its website?
Only reviews that do not touch clinical aspects. AHPRA states that comments about customer service or communication style are not testimonials under the National Law and may be used in advertising, while comments about a symptom, a treatment or an outcome are.
Who is responsible if an agency writes non-compliant copy?
AHPRA states that advertisers are responsible for their own advertising, including content produced by others on their behalf, and its FAQ extends that to content drafted or published by a marketing agency.
A sensible first step
Claim and complete the Google Business Profile, audit the reviews you are currently republishing, then work through the treatment pages one at a time. AHPRA publishes a self-assessment tool and a testimonial tool you can run your own pages against.
If you would rather work through it with someone, that is what we do. Web Intelligenz is a Melbourne team, and our SEO services cover the search side while your own clinical and compliance advisers keep the final say on wording. A support pack of four, eight or sixteen hours is usually enough to audit a practice site and fix the obvious problems, with no ongoing commitment. Get in touch if you would like a hand.
