Google Ads for Dentists, in the Order That Works.

Existing patients use a dental website constantly. If their clicks count as conversions, Google learns to find more people who are already yours. Count only what a new patient does:

• A call of 30 seconds or more
• A completed booking, not a click on “Book Now”
• An appointment request

An emergency patient decides in an afternoon and an implant patient over a season, so they get separate campaigns. Then price the patient: a $10 click, one in twenty clicks becoming a call or booking, and half of those booking puts a new patient at $400.

Start with the people ready to book. Those searches go into what we call the Isolation campaign: exact match only, one service per ad group, manual bids and an ad written for each group. That tight fit earns a strong Quality Score, so a relevant ad can hold the top spot without the biggest bid.

Keywords come from competitor websites through Google's Keyword Planner. The negative list starts on day one: dental jobs, dental schools, “free,” home remedies and even pet dentistry are real searches.

Search partners and AI Max arrive switched on, which loosens exact match and lets Google rewrite your ads. Turn AI Max off in the Isolation campaign, target the area patients actually travel from, and give the practice name its own brand campaign.

That usually arrives in months two or three, sooner for bigger accounts. Then an Exploration campaign (also our name) takes the best keywords to broad match with a target cost per conversion. Performance Max usually follows around months six or seven. Local Services Ads, which charge per patient call, are a test that runs alongside Search, sooner or later depending on the account. Demand Gen waits for the budget to feed it, and AI Max comes last.

A single implant averages about $2,695 nationally and All-on-4 about $15,176 (2024 Synchrony Average Procedural Cost Study, CareCredit). That supports roughly a $10 click for a single implant and a $50 click for a full arch, so the same bid can win on one and lose money on the other. Judge implants on accepted cases over months, not clicks over a week.