A year of ideas, each with a reason and a number
Lists of dental marketing ideas are easy to find. What they usually leave out is which ideas help a practice show up in local search, and how you would know whether any of them worked. This post, part of our Grow Your Practice Online series, takes one idea per month and ties each to something Google says affects local results, or to the moment a searcher decides to call. Each comes with an effort estimate and one number to watch. It is written for the office manager planning next year; start in whichever month you are in.
The levers, in Google's words
Google's page on local ranking says "Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity." Relevance is "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for," and Google asks for "complete and detailed business info." Prominence "means how well-known a business is" and is "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have." Its profile guidelines add that Google can also "detect category information" from the practice's site and from mentions of the business elsewhere on the web. Distance is the third factor, and no marketing idea changes it.
The other lever is what happens after someone finds you. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, visiting the business's website was the most common next step after reading positive reviews, chosen by 54% of respondents. So some ideas below are there to turn a search into a call, not to move a ranking. For how all of this fits together, see our guide to ranking for "dentist near me".
Do this first: write down where you start
An idea you cannot measure is a guess. Before the first month, record a baseline (our advice):
- From your profile's performance report, the last full month's calls, website clicks and direction requests. Google counts calls as "The number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile," so this is taps, not new patients.
- Your Google review total, and how many arrived in the last three months.
- Tagged profile traffic. Add UTM parameters to the website link on your profile so those visits show as their own line in Google Analytics. Google's campaign URL guide explains the parameters.
- How new patients say they found you, recorded by the front desk in the same few words every time.
The calendar
One idea per month. "Why it helps" names the lever and the source; where a cell says "our advice," Google has not said it. Effort is our estimate for a practice doing the work in-house.
| Month | Idea | Why it helps | Effort | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | Ask every patient for a Google review the same way every time, such as a link in the follow-up email after each visit | Prominence: Google says "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." Its review policy also says merchants "should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises" | An hour to set up, then minutes a day | New reviews per month, and the count from the last three months |
| February | Replace stock and outdated photos with real ones: the building from the street, the entrance, the front desk, a treatment room, the team | Conversion: Google says an exterior photo "helps customers recognize your business when they visit" and that images should "represent reality" | Half a day | Direction requests, before and after |
| March | Add accessibility and amenity details to the profile, such as a step-free entrance or accessible parking, and put the same facts on the website | Relevance: Google says "If you add certain attributes, your business might show up in searches for places with those attributes" | 30 minutes | Whether each detail shows on the live profile; calls |
| April | Listings check: name, address, phone and hours on your insurance plans' find-a-dentist directories and the main health directories, matched to your profile. Repeat in July, October and January | Accuracy: Google says "If your business info isn't accurate, your Business Profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area." Checking outside directories is our advice | About two hours a quarter | Listings checked and corrected |
| May | Summer treatment-page refresh: look at last summer's schedule for the treatments patients booked most, and update those pages with who does them, what the visits involve and how payment works | Relevance and conversion (our advice). Change the substance, not just the date: Google asks, "Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?" | A day | Search Console clicks to those pages, May to August, against last year |
| June | Sponsor something local you would support anyway, such as a youth team or a school fun run, and ask the organizer to mention you on their site | Prominence: Google says prominence "means how well-known a business is." Google's spam policies list "Exchanging money for links" as link spam, and say such links are "not a violation of our policies" only when they are "qualified with a rel='nofollow' or rel='sponsored'" attribute. Ask the organizer to add rel="sponsored". Our reading: the value is being known locally | Varies | Mentions earned; visits from the organizer's site in Analytics |
| July | Write the treatment page you are missing: the treatment you most want more of that has no page of its own | Relevance: Google says it can "detect category information" from the practice's site. Our post on what actually brings in dental patients covers why one services page is not enough | One to two days | Search Console impressions and clicks for the new page after three months; calls and form requests from it |
| August | Back to school: a profile post about something real, such as appointment times for school-year checkups or sports mouthguard fittings | Conversion: Google says seeing your latest updates "helps them decide to visit your business." Posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range | 30 minutes | Website clicks and calls while the post is up |
| September | Answer the front desk's most common phone questions on the website: insurance, payment, the first visit, emergencies | Relevance and conversion: Google asks whether your audience "would find the content useful if they came directly to you" | Half a day | Visits to those pages; a front-desk tally of the same questions |
| October | Remind existing patients, by email or mail, to use their remaining benefits if their plans renew on January 1 | Conversion only: patients who already chose you. This is not a ranking factor | Two hours | Appointments booked from the reminder, tracked with a tagged link |
| November | Set special hours for every holiday through New Year, including days you are open as usual | Accuracy: Google says "It's a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays, even if they're the same as your regular hours" | 20 minutes | Special hours entered for each holiday; calls in holiday weeks |
| December | Check how the groups you belong to list you: your dental society, study clubs, your hospital affiliation, and the specialists you refer to | Our reading: real links from real relationships help prominence, which Google says draws on "how many websites link to your business" | An hour or two of emails | Listings with the right name, address and a working link to your site |
Summer: the hours first, then the ideas
If you came here for dental marketing ideas for summer, the May to August rows are yours, but if your office keeps a different schedule in summer, start with the hours. Google's guidelines say "If applicable, you may use your current seasonal hours as your regular hours," and allow special hours "for particular days, like holidays or special events." Our advice for a practice that shortens its summer week: change the regular hours on the day the summer schedule starts, change them back on the day it ends, and use special hours for single days such as the Fourth of July. Google's special hours page covers closures of "up to 6 days in a row"; for a closure of "7 or more days in a row," such as a summer break, it says to mark the business as temporarily closed. Then work through the four summer rows: a refreshed treatment page, a local sponsorship, the missing page and a back-to-school post.
Rules that apply to offers, reviews and patient messages
Three of the ideas touch rules, and each gets one pointer here, not a legal summary. If a post, page or reminder mentions a price or an offer, California's Business and Professions Code section 651 says "Any price advertisement shall be exact," and the ADA's Principles of Ethics, section 5.F say no dentist shall advertise "in a manner that is false or misleading in any material respect"; other states have their own rules. If any reminder goes out by text or phone, read the ADA's guidance on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act first; a later post in this series covers consent for texting patients. For the review ask, our posts on how many Google reviews a practice needs and on Google's review rules for dental practices cover what you may and may not do.
Ideas we left out, and why
These show up on other lists. We left them out on purpose:
- Contests, discounts or gifts for reviews. Google's review tips say offering incentives "in exchange for customers to post reviews" is "considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited."
- Asking only the patients you expect to be happy. Google's review policy says "We do not allow merchants to" "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers."
- A page for every nearby town. Google's spam policies name "pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" as doorway abuse. A post later in this series covers city and neighborhood pages.
- Keywords added to the business name. Google's guidelines say "Including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile."
- Paid directory links and link packages. Google's spam policies list "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" as link spam.
- A profile post every day. Google's local ranking page does not mention posts. Our advice: post when something real changes, as in August above.
Reviewing the year
At the end of the year, put this year's numbers next to the baseline and keep the ideas whose numbers moved. Where you have last year's figures, compare each month with the same month a year earlier as well, since a dental schedule has its own busy and quiet months. For the pages you wrote or refreshed, group Search Console's Performance report by page and read each page's clicks and impressions. Two cautions when you read the profile report. Google says the performance data covers actions from both organic search results and Google Ads, so if you ran ads, a rise in calls may be the ads. And "The searches metric is updated at the start of each month," so judge by quarter, not by week. If an idea did nothing you can see after two quarters, drop it and give the month to something else. Our Business Profile guide for dentists covers the profile settings most of these ideas depend on.
Want a plan built around your numbers?
Request a free audit and we will send a personalized video review of your website and local search presence, with the months in this calendar that would matter most for your practice. If you are at the San Diego Dental Convention on November 20-21, 2026, come by Booth 9 and we can sketch your first quarter together.