Orthodontist SEO case study: two offices, one connected patient journey
Orthodontist SEO case study: map share up at both offices, Google search clicks up 2.5x and profile views up about 20% after a website and profile rebuild.
Outcome
Map share, the share of the map where an office shows up in Google’s top three, rose from 68% to 85% at one office and from 53% to 81% at the other, Google search clicks to the site rose about 2.5 times, and the AI assistants name the practice across the core patient questions.
The practice
The client is an orthodontic practice with two locations in the US, each drawing from its own local market. It is bilingual in English and Spanish, and same-day braces and in-house financing are among the things patients repeat about it.
The starting condition
The site had grown a page at a time, and the two Google Business Profiles were managed separately. The practice had no shared picture of where it showed up across the areas each office serves, and no clean count of which inquiries came from where.
What was built, in the order the diagnosis set
Market and competitive audit. We audited how the practice shows up across Google, the local map and the AI assistants, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, against the practices patients see instead.
Offer, from the practice’s own data. The practice’s anonymized transaction history was used to pin down who its best patients are, and a brand voice, tone and messaging direction was built around them. No patient information left the practice’s own systems.
The site. We migrated it to a new platform on the same domain, with a new page structure, redirects for the addresses worth keeping, titles and descriptions swept, and structured data rebuilt for both offices. Each office has its own page with its own schema, and each Google profile points to its own office page, tagged so its visits can be told apart. There is a page for every service, from each kind of braces to Invisalign, retainers and early treatment.
Content the old site never had. An orthodontic issues hub explains conditions like crowding, overbite, underbite and gaps, and how the practice treats each one. Seven life-with-braces guides cover the first week, what to eat, playing sports and emergencies. Decision pages cover braces or Invisalign, the first visit and paying for treatment, and an objection-based Smile Quiz answers the reason a patient has been putting it off.
Profiles. Both Google Business Profiles were rebuilt: primary category, a consolidated services list with descriptions, the language attribute, financing handled in the description rather than as a service, clean business names, the booking link pointed at a tracked consultation page, and one batch of posts in the first month. After that month we left the profiles alone.
Analytics. We wired tag management, GA4 and session recording with named events for inquiries, calls, bookings and quiz starts, so the practice counts a lead once and can see which source produced it.
Now in build. We are building an intake and patient-communication system on the practice’s CRM, integrated with its practice management software, so an inquiry is answered in minutes, followed up until it books, and reminded until it shows.
What this changed
Map share at both offices
We search from 169 spots in a grid around each office, with the same search terms every time. Map share is the share of those spots where the office shows up in Google’s top three, not counting ads. The two checks after the relaunch ran at the same time of day, with both offices open.
Location A:
Location B:
Both offices gained most on the biggest search terms: orthodontist, braces and Invisalign. Location B went from the top three in about 20% of its area for “orthodontist” to 43%, which is still the term with the most room to grow. The gains kept coming between the two later checks, when nobody was touching the profiles.
Search traffic
Clicks from Google search to the website went from an average of 304 a month in the three months before the relaunch to 753 a month in the three months after it, according to Search Console. In the six months before the new site went live, clicks had slid from 385 a month to 281.
The growth came from people who did not search for the practice by name, since clicks from name searches stayed about the same.
Google profile views
Views of the two Google profiles were 6% above a year earlier in the first month after the relaunch and slightly below it in the second, and by the end of the third month they were running about 20% above a year earlier.
AI answers
The AI Visibility scan moved the same way: the AI assistants name the practice across the core patient questions, where before they did not. That is a qualitative read of recorded answers.
No revenue or patient count is published, because that tracking went live partway through the engagement.
The pillars this touched
Market Visibility came first, because the audit showed where the practice was and was not being found. Offer Design came second, from the practice’s own patient data. Insights came third, because the practice could not say which inquiries came from where. Systems is not claimed until the intake build is finished.
Pillars applied
This engagement applied Market Visibility, Offer Design and Insights, 3 of the six pillars.
Built on the MOSAIC Six, created by Ala Al-Shaibani. Read the framework
What to fix first
Before we meet, we review where your business appears and what customers encounter online. During the 30-minute call, you walk us through what happens after an inquiry arrives. Those two views help us identify what deserves attention first and why. If you already have a project in mind, we start there.