Google Ads for Dentists: A Step-by-Step Setup Guide for UK Practices

Search ads work when people are already looking. For a practice, that usually means three kinds of search:

• Urgent: "emergency dentist [town]", "dentist open now". Our guide to emergency dentist marketing explains why search wins here.
• High-value treatments with intent: "dental implants near me", "Invisalign cost", "veneers [town]".
• New patients looking for a practice: "private dentist [town]", "dentist taking new patients".

Before you spend anything, make sure each treatment you advertise has its own page on your website, and that someone answers the phone during the hours your ads run.

• Create the Google Ads account with the practice's Google account, not a staff member's or an agency's personal one.
• If Google pushes you into a simplified "Smart" campaign during sign-up, switch to Expert mode so you control keywords, locations and settings.
• Set the currency to GBP and the time zone to London. Neither is easy to change later.
• Add the practice's payment details.
• Link your Google Business Profile and Google Analytics 4.
• Give your team or agency access through Access and security, with their own logins.

Without conversion tracking, Google cannot tell which clicks became patients, and neither can you.

• Install the Google tag on every page of your website.
• Track the actions that matter as primary conversions: a completed booking, a submitted enquiry form and calls from ads.
• Turn on call reporting so calls from your ads are counted. Google's call assets can show your number in ads and count those calls as conversions (Google Ads Help: call assets).
• Do not count page views, time on site or button clicks as conversions. They make results look better than they are.
• Test each conversion yourself before launch.

• Choose a Search campaign with a leads goal. Avoid starting with Performance Max or Display: they are harder to control and to read for a local practice.
• Untick the Display Network. Leave Search partners off at first and test them later.
• Locations: a radius around the practice that matches how far patients really travel.
• Location options: choose "Presence" so ads show to people in or regularly in your area. The default, "Presence or interest", can also show ads to people elsewhere who are only interested in your area (Google Ads Help: advanced location options).
• Language: English.
• Ad schedule: the hours someone can answer the phone or the booking system is live.
• One campaign per service type, for example Emergency, Implants, Aligners, General, each with its own budget.

Start tight and widen later. It is easier to add keywords that work than to recover money spent on the wrong ones.

• Group keywords by treatment, one ad group per treatment.
• Start with phrase match and exact match for your core terms, such as "dental implants [town]" or "emergency dentist near me".
• Add negative keywords from day one: "jobs", "course", "training", "salary", "DIY", "home remedy", and "NHS" if you are fully private and that matches how you work.
• Check the search terms report every week. Add irrelevant searches as negatives, and add good ones as keywords.
• Bidding on competitors' practice names rarely pays for a dental practice and can annoy local colleagues.

Google's responsive search ads let you add up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90 characters, and Google tests combinations.

• Put the treatment and the town in headlines: "Dental Implants in Bath".
• Say what the first step is and what it costs: "Implant Consultation £95" or "Free Aligner Consultation", only if true.
• Add reasons to choose you that you can prove: years in the area, real review rating, parking, evening appointments.
• Avoid "best", "guaranteed", "pain-free" and "specialist" unless the dentist is on a GDC specialist list. See claims that put dental ads at risk.
• If you use a brand name such as Invisalign, follow your provider agreement. We cover this in Invisalign marketing.
• Send every ad group to the matching treatment page, not the homepage.

• Call asset with your phone number, scheduled for the hours you answer calls.
• Location asset, linked to your Google Business Profile.
• Sitelinks to key pages: fees, team, emergency appointments, reviews.
• Callouts with short facts: "Evening appointments", "Free parking", "Finance available" (if you offer it and the wording is checked).
• Structured snippets listing treatments.

Assets make ads bigger and more useful on a phone, and they often improve click-through rate at no extra cost.

• Set a daily budget per campaign that you can keep steady for at least a month.
• If conversion tracking is new or there is little history, start with Maximize clicks with a maximum cost per click, or Maximize conversions once you trust the tracking.
• Move to a target cost per acquisition only after the campaign has a steady flow of real conversions.
• Change bids and budgets once a week, not every day. Smart bidding needs time to learn.

Our LTV calculator helps you decide how much you can afford to pay for a patient who turns up, which tells you what a sensible cost per conversion is.

Google treats health as a sensitive category in personalised advertising. For ads about physical health conditions or invasive procedures, advertisers cannot use their own audience lists, such as Customer Match or your data segments, or lookalike segments (Google Ads policy: health in personalised advertising).

• Do not upload patient lists to target ads for treatments.
• Rely on keywords and locations rather than audience lists for treatment campaigns.
• Keep ad text factual and avoid implying you know anything about the searcher's health.

• Answer calls quickly and call back missed calls within minutes.
• Reply to forms within minutes during opening hours.
• Book a specific time and send automated reminders.
• Record which campaign each booking came from.

In our own campaign for a dental clinic in Larnaca, €250 of spend produced 12 patients who attended in 14 days, about €20.8 per attended patient (case study). One campaign is not a benchmark, but it shows that fast follow-up and reminders decide how many clicks become patients, whatever the channel.

• Search terms report: add negatives and new keywords.
• Conversions: check that calls and forms are still being recorded.
• Campaigns: compare cost per booked and cost per kept appointment, and move budget to what fills the diary.
• Ads: pause headlines that never get shown or clicked, and test one new idea.

Want a second opinion on your Google Ads account? Book a free 30-minute audit call.

• Letting Google set up a Smart or Performance Max campaign and never checking where the money goes.
• Leaving the Display Network on in a Search campaign.
• Using "Presence or interest" and paying for clicks from outside your area.
• Sending all ads to the homepage.
• Counting page views or button clicks as conversions.
• No negative keywords, so the budget goes on job seekers and students.
• Judging by clicks or cost per click instead of patients who attend.