How dental patients search
Three kinds of search reach a dental clinic. Emergency: “dentist open now”, “tooth pain relief near me”, “emergency dental Kathmandu” — high intent, converts by phone within the hour. Treatment: “dental implant cost Nepal”, “braces price”, “teeth whitening near me”, “root canal treatment” — researched over days, converts on a consultation. And routine: “dental checkup near me”, “teeth cleaning” — low value individually but the source of long-term patients. Almost all of it is mobile, local and price-aware, and almost all of it converts on a call rather than a form. My Google Ads services for dental clinics are structured around those differences in value and urgency.
What changes in Google Ads for dental
Treatment-level campaigns
Implants, orthodontics, cosmetic work, root canals and routine care each get their own campaign and budget, because an implant case can be worth twenty routine visits. Without that split, the cheap clicks win the budget and the high-value treatments never get tested.
Radius targeting and schedule
Patients choose a clinic they can reach. Campaigns use a radius around each location with presence targeting, and ad schedules follow reception hours, with emergency keywords running outside them only if someone answers the phone.
Keywords and negatives
Exact and phrase match on treatment plus location plus “cost” or “near me”. Negatives for “jobs”, “vacancy”, “BDS”, “course”, “college”, “assistant”, “free”, “home remedy”, “toothpaste”, “insurance” where you do not accept it, and treatments you do not offer.
Policy
Dental sits under Google’s healthcare policy: claims must be accurate, before-and-after imagery is restricted in some markets, and personalized advertising based on health conditions is prohibited, so remarketing lists built from treatment pages are not allowed. Local dental council advertising rules apply on top. Copy describes the treatment and the clinic without promising outcomes.
Assets and landing pages
Call assets during opening hours, location assets tied to the Business Profile, price assets where you publish prices, sitelinks to treatments and the team. A page per treatment with the price or range, the process, how long it takes, the dentist’s credentials and a phone number and short form above the fold. Price transparency converts strongly in dental because patients are comparing.
Tracking
Calls from ads and from the page, both above a minimum duration, WhatsApp clicks and online appointment bookings are tracked as conversions. Where the clinic records which enquiries attended and which treatments they took, those outcomes are imported so bidding favours implant and orthodontic enquiries over routine ones. The method is under conversion tracking.
Typical account structure
- Brand campaign for the clinic and dentists’ names.
- Emergency campaign on urgent keywords, scheduled to when the phone is answered, with call-only ads.
- High-value treatment campaigns: implants, orthodontics and cosmetic dentistry, each with its own landing page and cost-per-consultation target.
- Routine care campaign at a modest budget for checkups and cleaning, judged on new-patient value rather than first-visit revenue.
- Location campaigns per branch for multi-site practices.
The call and appointment layer follows lead generation campaigns; the wider clinical context is on Google Ads for healthcare.
Mistakes I see in dental accounts
- One campaign for every treatment, so whitening clicks spend the implant budget.
- Remarketing lists built from treatment pages, which breaks healthcare policy.
- Emergency ads running at 2am for a clinic that opens at 9.
- Counting every call, including the ones that lasted eight seconds.
- City-wide targeting for a clinic patients choose by proximity.
Full stack for dental
Paid search fills this week’s chairs; organic and reviews fill next year’s. The same industry is covered under SEO for dental clinics and Meta Ads for dental. There are no separate marketing or automation industry pages for dental yet; appointment booking automation covers the reminder and rebooking side, and Google Business Profile optimization covers the map listing that sits beside your ads.
Next step
Send read-only access for a free Google Ads audit; the summary will show which treatments your budget is buying calls for, how many of those calls were real patients, and whether any audience is at policy risk.