Choosing a dentist or a doctor is a trust decision, and much of it happens on a phone before anyone calls. A practice that is easy to find and easy to understand has an advantage, even over a larger one with a weaker website.
Give each treatment its own page
Patients search for specific things: a dental implant, a root canal, a knee injection, a vein treatment. A practice that lists all its services on one page rarely appears for any of them. Write one page per treatment, in plain language, covering what it is, who it is for, what to expect and how to book.
Keep the medical content accurate and written or reviewed by a clinician at the practice. Google holds health content to a higher standard than most, and so should you.
Answer the practical questions up front
Before a new patient calls, they want to know which insurance you accept, where to park, whether you are taking new patients and what the first visit involves. Put these on the site where they are easy to find, not inside a PDF or behind a form.
Make booking easy on a phone
A tappable phone number and a short appointment request form at the top of every page do more than a long contact page. Test the form on a real phone, because a form that is hard to use costs bookings you will never see.
Look after the Google Business Profile
For a practice, the profile is often the first thing a patient sees. Use the correct primary category, list each provider and service, keep hours and holiday hours accurate and add real photos of the premises. The profile checklist walks through the details.
Reply to reviews carefully. Do not confirm that a reviewer is a patient or mention any treatment, since privacy rules for health information apply even to a public reply. A short, polite message that invites them to contact the office is safer.
Use ads for specific treatments
Search takes time, and some treatments are worth supporting with paid advertising. One Long Island vascular and pain practice ran symptom-screener lead ads for knee pain and vein treatment and received 1,498 patient enquiries in two months. Those are enquiries, not booked patients, and the case study is clear about that. Health advertising is also regulated by the ad platforms, so the wording needs care.
Where to start
If your site is dated, start with the treatment pages and the practical information, then fix the profile, then think about ads. My page on websites for dentists and medical practices explains how I approach it.