New patients welcome. Prove it.
Insurance, first-visit cost, Saturday hours. Answer them before anyone has to call.
What the home page says
Section by section, in the order a visitor reads it.
Insurance we take
It's the first thing most new patients want to know, and your front desk answers it all day. Name each plan, say what a visit costs without insurance, and change the list the day a plan changes.
Your first visit
Someone who hasn't seen a dentist in years is picturing the worst. Say how long the visit takes, whether X-rays are part of it and what it costs. If nobody gets a lecture about flossing, say that too.
What we treat
Use the words patients type: a cleaning, a crown, a root canal, whitening. Give implants and kids' dentistry their own pages, since someone pricing an implant and a parent with a nervous six-year-old want different things.
Dental emergencies
A cracked tooth at 7 a.m. can't wait for a form. Say whether you keep same-day time, put the phone number beside it, and say what to do when the office is closed.
Meet the dentists
Patients are choosing who works inside their mouth. Give real names, degrees and faces. Swap any stock photo of a perfect smile for your own before you publish, because it isn't your patient or your work.
Request a visit
Ask for a name, a phone number and a good time to call, and stop there. Shingle's forms and booking aren't HIPAA-compliant tools, so symptoms, X-rays, insurance IDs and treatment history stay out of them. Those belong in your patient portal or on the phone.
How they search
- dentist near me
- dentist that takes delta dental
- emergency dentist near me
- dentist open saturday
- teeth cleaning cost
- kids dentist near me
- dental implants near me
- root canal cost
What earns their trust
- Each dentist's name, degree and state license
- The insurance plans you take, named one by one
- What a first visit costs without insurance
- What you offer nervous patients, such as sedation
- Photos of your real office, chairs and team
- Patient reviews, once you check your state board's rules
How it gets found
What moves a dentist up in a town's results.
Get each dentist's listing right
Google treats dentists as individual practitioners. One who sees patients directly can have a profile. A solo dentist under a practice name should share the practice's profile, and office staff don't get one.
Let pages carry the specialties
Google doesn't allow extra profiles for each specialty, so implants, whitening and kids' dentistry need pages of their own. Say what the work involves, who does it and what patients should expect to pay.
Say you're taking new patients
Put it in plain words near the top of the site, and take it down when it stops being true. schema.org's Dentist type has a field for it as well, which Shingle's own markup leaves out.
Reply to reviews with care
A reply can confirm that someone is your patient. Thank people in general terms, never mention treatment, and ask your adviser what to do about a harsh review.
How to sell one
A patient who likes a practice can stay for decades, and new ones now shop on a phone. Many practices already pay for a site that came with a marketing package, where changing the plan list means opening a ticket.
Start with the office manager, who takes the insurance calls. Open their demo on a phone and show where the plan list, the first-visit cost and the Saturday hours would go. A demo knows only what's public, so ask for the plan list before you call it finished.
- “We already have a site through our marketing company.”
- Ask who can change the plan list today, how long it takes, and who owns the domain if they leave. Check when their contract ends before you promise a date. A new site can wait until then.
- “Is this HIPAA compliant?”
- Say no, and say what that means. Its forms and booking aren't HIPAA-compliant tools, so this is the practice's public site and nothing clinical goes through it. Their patient portal keeps that job, and their own adviser answers the rest.
- “We're full. We don't need more patients.”
- Then the site can say who you are taking. A full hygiene schedule and an empty implant calendar are different problems, and a page can point people at the work you want more of.
- “Patients find us through their insurance directory.”
- Ask what they do next. They look you up, and an old plan list or a Saturday that no longer exists sends them to the next name in the directory.
- “What can we say about results?”
- Less than a marketer would like, and that's fine. Rules on claims and testimonials vary, so the dentist should check the state board's rules and read every line through a private review link before anything goes live.
Common questions
Can't find your answer? Read Shingle Help or email [email protected].
The insurance plans you take, what a first visit involves and costs, your hours, your treatments and the dentists' names, all where a phone shows them early. Add a way to call, directions and a short request form that asks for no health details. Big treatments such as implants can have pages of their own.
They shouldn't, so don't ask for them. Shingle's forms and booking aren't HIPAA-compliant tools, and Shingle's terms ask you not to collect health information through a site's forms. Ask for a name, a phone number and a good time to call, then use your patient portal for the rest. Your own adviser can say what else a dental office needs.
Shingle's booking page takes a service, a day, a time, a name and an email, so keep service names general, such as new patient visit. If your practice software schedules online, put its link in Details and your Book buttons open it instead. Ask your own adviser which suits your practice.
Not in the usual sense. Shingle doesn't start from a fixed template. It writes a fresh site from your notes on the practice, so the plan list, hours and treatments are your own. A group with several offices can keep one finished site as its own template and copy it for the next office.
Only if you choose. Review quotes and customers' photos stay off unless you turn them on, while your Google rating starts on once you have 4.0 from 10 reviews, and you can turn that off too. Rules on testimonials and claims vary, so check your state board's rules and get the patient's permission first.
It's built not to invent them. It writes from what you give it and can explain a treatment in general terms, and a separate review takes out prices, awards or results your facts don't support. It can still get things wrong, so a dentist should read every treatment page before it goes live.
Read next
- Website formsForms that email you and send each lead where you work.
- Online bookingServices, staff, hours and reminders on a booking page.
- Client review linksA private link where clients comment on the page.
- Optimize a Google Business ProfileEvery field that matters, from Google's own guidance.
- Get more Google reviewsHow to ask, when, and what Google's rules forbid.
- Local business schema generatorStructured data for your page's head.
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