"Two Truths That Just Died" — And What's Replacing Them in Dental Marketing

Still betting your dental practice's growth on SEO alone? That strategy is quietly expiring.

In this episode of the Dental Marketing Mix, DentalScapes co-founders Dan Brian and Brian Craig dig into two ideas that used to be treated as gospel in dental marketing — and simply aren't true anymore. First, the long-held belief that strong SEO lets you skip paid advertising. Brian explains why that world is disappearing fast as Google's results page fills up with Local Service Ads, AI Overviews, sponsored map listings, and now ads inside AI Mode — to the point where many searches surface only one or two organic results. Dan and Brian talk through what realistic growth looks like with organic alone, when ad spend becomes non-negotiable, and the roughly $1,000-a-month starting budget most practices need to gather usable data.

From there, the conversation turns to a bigger shift: websites used to be built for human visitors, but Brian makes the case that they now need to be built for AI — and increasingly for AI agents. He breaks down why generic "dentist near me" searches are giving way to highly personalized, context-rich queries, and why your site has to spell out exactly what you do best rather than imply it. Dan and Brian cover the practical fundamentals that make a site AI-ready — individual service pages, FAQs, a detailed About page, and city or neighborhood pages — plus why reviews and a well-optimized Google Business Profile still matter enormously, and the new trend of social media posts surfacing directly on your GBP.

If your practice is still operating on the old rules, this episode will help you understand what's changed and where to focus next.

📋 Full show notes: https://dentalscapes.com/resources/two-truths-that-just-died-in-dental-marketing

Want to know how your marketing stacks up in the AI era? Book a free strategy call with DentalScapes at https://dentalscapes.com/start — we'll take a look at your full patient acquisition picture together.

Transcript

0:02

To the dental marketing mix. Online know-how for dentists. With your hosts, Dan Bra and Brian Craig. Brought to you by Dental Scapes, a full service marketing agency for dental. practices. Okay, welcome back to the dental marketing mix. I'm Dan Brian, co-founder of Dental Scapes, joined today again by my co-founder, Brian Craig. What's up, Brian? How's it going? Hey, hey. Living life. Yeah, so excited to dig into this topic today. I'm I'm ex I I'm excited about this one. This is something that, you know, you've been talking about a lot lately and it's certainly making some buzz in the online marketing space. And you know, so really we're gonna talk today about two things that are no longer true. Um and and sort of what's what's replacing those truths. Um and so the first one that's kind of interesting for people, and it's interesting for us because we've always, you know, of course, really doubled down on SEO and organic search. Um, but that said, there's something that's shifting there uh recently. There used to be this idea that you could, if you did it right and you invested well enough, you could avoid paid advertising, essentially, and supplant that with doubling down on SEO and organic search. But You know, according to you and according to the prevailing consensus out there, that's that's no longer the case. What would you say about that? Yeah, that that world is quickly going away. and you know, it makes sense because, you know, Google wants to maximize their revenue, of course, with advertising dollars. And what we've seen over the past couple of years is is, you know, the so uh the the search engine results have slowly been moving towards paid media. You know, you you had you've had traditional ads forever. Now we've had those LSAs up top for a couple of years. Um, you know, then we had AI overviews and we've got sponsored map listings. And, you know, more and more is uh is starting to populate the the top of that results page. Uh and you know, now now it's several panels down to get any organic results and and we're seeing a lot of searches where there might just be one or two organic results on the entire first page. Yeah, Which is which is a little bit nuts. Uh and and with the introduction of ads in AI mode recently from Google, that's one of the final nails in the coffin, I think, on on organic only cam or SEO only campaigns. you really do have to be visible everywhere. Yeah, a hundred percent. And do you think that some of the skepticism by consumers that's historically sort of surrounded clicking on ads, you know, people see that sponsored label or they see, you know, the difference between those ad placements and those organic blue links? Do you think some of that skepticism has declined as they've just been overwhelmed with, you know, all of these advertising options? Now, like you said, you may have a result that only has one or two organic links, which is just Wild. Yeah. Yeah. I this is this is a very common discussion I have with folks and um I I question whether the skepticism over sponsored links is widespread or not. Yeah. Because Dan, like you and I, we see those search results and we're like, sponsored. I'm not clicking on that. I'm gonna scroll down. that one's sponsored too. Keep going. Yeah. but as I've talked to people over the years, I don't know that the average consumer uh has has has that same eye for detail of that's an ad as as we might. Yeah. Um, yeah. So what do you think about, you know, um, there there's still a mindset among certain, you know, dentist owners, among, you know, business owners in other industries that you can survive solely by investing in SEO and organic search? What would you advise, you know, someone who comes to you, you know, and and gives you that perspective? What would you advise that person to consider instead? And where would you start now with so many ad options out there? Mm-hmm. So I would say you have to know yourself and you have to know your business. Um, because if someone comes to us and and says, ah hey, you know, I'm a I'm a a one doctor practice, I love it this way, I'm making the amount of money I want to make, um, you know, I'm okay with five percent growth a year or ten percent growth a year. Yeah, you might you might be able to hit that by by just, you know, checking some of the basics. getting referrals if you have an a a good existing patient base, getting uh, you know, fresh five star reviews, you might be able to hit that. But we have a lot of practices that come to us and say, I want to double by the end of the year. Or I wanna, you know, I wanna, I wanna have 50% more patients by uh, you know, Thanksgiving or or whatever that metric is. And that's not going to happen with organic in ninety seven, you know, ninety plus percent of uh of cases. that's going to require some level of ad spend. So I I think you really have to know your business and and know where you want to go. And if you do want those kinda kinda out out I won't say outlandish, but above average uh growth metrics, you have to be visible in in all of these things now. Now, also for you know, for a practice that, you know, does want to grow, is willing now at this point to start investing maybe for the first time in online advertising, what's the kind of budget we're looking at that's sort of a starting point or sort of a minimum investment for most? Let let's just say an average, you know, uh one doc practice. What are we kind of looking at there as some kind of like minimum viable investment? Yeah, I think your minimum viable investment in most markets is is gonna be around a thousand dollars a month. Yeah. Uh now if you're if you're in downtown Miami and you're wanting to be competitive, that's a different story. Or if you're in LA or whatever. Um, but for for most markets, most MSAs, that that's gonna be an appropriate budget to start out. If you spend much less than that, you're not gonna have the data to really dial in your campaign. Yeah. so that that's about where I like to see most practices start. Sounds good. Well, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, things are changing so rapidly. Um, and of course, not just on the online advertising side of things, but also, and this is, you know, probably our favorite topic to dig into lately, AI. So um, AI is changing everything, obviously, in online marketing and elsewhere. Um, and one thing that used to be true, and Google practically shouted it from the rooftops, was that. You focus your website design on the end user and creating an experience that really speaks, you know, as best and as as most relevant as possible to the user's query and and and what the human being um on the other side of of that wall was was was looking for. Now though, we're seeing a shift where folks are saying, and you included, We really need to be pivoting to create these websites in a way that, you know, speaks best to AI and in some cases to AI agents. What do you mean by that? And what's what's the difference that you're seeing out there? Yeah. the there's a lot that came out. So uh Google had their their Google Marketing Live conference um in the last two weeks. And there's a lot that we're still digesting from that. Um, but one of the things that's that's pretty clear uh is that we are shifting from in a lot of cases from people visiting websites to people getting answers directly either in search via AI mode on Google. Or via their favorite LLM, whether that be Claude or Gemini or Grok or Perplexity or or you know, something totally different. Yeah. so I'm not saying don't make the websites look good. We all want to have websites that look good because there were still b they'll there will still be humans visiting them. Yeah. but I think we need to be I know we need to be prepared for a world in the near future. where the majority of our traffic is is probably personalized AI agents. Yeah. and one of the big things that you want to make sure that your website does in a world like that is that it really calls out your niche and and who you want to speak to because those queries aren't going to be who's the best dentist near me or just dentist near me. The majority of them are going to be more personalized, whether it's Whether it's specifically personalized in the query, like uh I'm afraid of the dentist and I want to be put to sleep for my root canal, who's the best dentist within five miles of me that can do that. Um, or what we're seeing a lot of um, and and if you're using Chat GPT or Claude, you've probably seen it is you can just ask it a basic question. And if you if you've used it for a little while, it has a lot of context about you. Yeah. So if if you say like who's the best dentist near me and you've asked it those types of health questions before, it's gonna know, oh, you know, Joe is is deathly afraid of the dentist, or or you know, Joe has had five root canals in the past twenty-four whatever that context is. And there's gonna be context in in those fan out queries um as the agent is trying to find that answer. So you really do need to speak. to what you do best that you d you know that you do better than that that practice two miles down the road. Yeah. And it can't just be implied in photos or in, you know, whatever. It has to actually be spelled out in a way that these agents will be able to So what are some of the practical, you know, tips that you would suggest practices um, you know, put into play when creating that kind of website that speaks uh, you know, best to AI agents? What are some of the specific tactics that you recommend? Yeah, I think I think you have the basics. So you want um, you know, you want individual pages per service. you you you want like one of the one of the other basics is frequently asked questions on on some of those pages to to answer like what the searcher is looking for. That's not new for AI. you know, that's that's been an SEO thing for a long time too. There's been a lot of chatter around um schema for AI. There's not a lot of data that backs that up. And there was a recent a recent study by eight was it hrefs? It was either hrefs or call rail. I'm gonna have to go back and look it up. Um maybe we can can link it in the notes or something in the future. Uh that was talking about um, you know, testing adding schema to websites and and in pretty much every situation it had zero impact. And I think on chat GPT it even resulted in like five percent less visibility or something crazy. so that there are a lot of guesses out there about what to include, but I I think, you know, a lot of your traditional stuff around pages for each service on the about page, um, you know, talk about what makes you unique. Talk about your team, talk about your credentials, um, talk about your office. Like what what makes your your office different? Put some good photos or videos in there. Um, you know, it's it's uh it's going to pull context about that, most likely. That's not always even, you know, the new, the new stuff, the shiny objects. Sometimes, you know, as we found even in GEO or generative engine optimization, it's doubling down on the things that we've known have worked for a long time. Uh and really following the best practices and and doing it maybe in a more consistent way um than's previously been done. So definitely um a a brave new world out there. Um, if, you know, uh practice owner listening to this today is interested in uh you know, taking a look at their website, seeing if it's set up for AI search. What's the what's the next best thing they can do? goodness, that's a that's a rabbit hole. Um for something that that Man. Just call you. That's all they gotta do. Well, yeah, of course. Yeah. But no, uh I I I think the the most important thing to focus on is is uh still the fundamentals for practice owners because you know, I'm uh I'm I'm not gonna say, hey, go look in your code and and look for these four specific things. Um I think that the low hanging fruit that that most folks should should take a look at, in in the majority of cases are are a lot of what I just mentioned are around individualized service pages with FAQs. Yeah. in a lot of markets, like you can still do things like have dedicated pages per um per city, per geo, per neighborhood, whatever. Yeah. and one of the most important things, like once you have all the basics on the website knocked out, it's still get reviews. Yeah. Because Google wants to show the most relevant results, whether that's maps, whether that's AI, you know, regardless of what it is, is Serving up your practice going to be relevant and is it going to provide a good experience to the searcher? So if you have a Google business pro so if you have that website set up properly and you have a Google business profile that's consistently getting five star reviews that has all the services built out on it so they match what you have on your website, uh has all your categories set right, you know, you're you're consistently posting new photos or videos. Something that is fairly new that I do want to mention that we've seen in the past quarter, I'll say, is for a long time there it was just uh Google Business Profile posts that were surf surfaced on the profile. What we're seeing a lot more now is actual social media posts being surfaced on the on the Google Business Profile. So if you have a a special you've put up on Instagram or on Facebook or whatever, Google. No, no, Yeah, it'll surface that in the carousel below the the local business profile. Interesting. Yeah. Well, so much is changing. You know, like I said, today we got into, you know, maybe two former gospel truths within marketing that are no longer um perhaps, you know, as relevant or accurate. And so, um, always, you know, staying tuned to the latest developments. Stay tuned to the Dental Scapes blog. We publish you know, new information and New podcast episodes like this one every single week. You mentioned reviews. We've had a number of discussions within the last few months on reviews, some of the best ways that dental practices can get those consistently. So check that out. But Brian, thank you so much for coming on today. It's always great hanging out and sharing your perspective, but really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, any dentist owner or practice administrator listening out there, we would so appreciate it if you would take just 30 seconds and leave a five-star rating or review. Wherever you're listening to this, it really does mean a lot to us. It's the best way for us to reach other practice owners out there that we can, you know, potentially help. So thanks all for tuning in. Thanks, Brian, and we'll see you all next time. And we'll see ya. You by dental scapes. Visit dentalscapes.com for a free strategy call and learn how to take your dental practice to the next. level.