The Google Business Profile Playbook for BC Dental Practices

For a single-location dental practice, your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the highest-leverage marketing surface you own. Most patients searching "dentist near me" or "emergency dentist Vancouver" never click past the local map pack. If your profile is incomplete, you're invisible — even if your website is gorgeous.

The five things every dental GBP needs

• Primary category: set this to "Dentist" — not "Cosmetic dentist" or "Emergency dentist." Use secondary categories for those.
• Services list: populate every service you offer with descriptions and pricing ranges where appropriate.
• Photos every 30 days: exterior, interior, team, and procedure photos. GBP rewards freshness.
• Q&A seeded: pre-populate your top ten patient questions with your own answers before patients leave their own.
• Weekly posts: treat GBP like a social channel — post offers, hours changes, and team updates weekly.

Reviews are still the #1 ranking signal

Google's local algorithm weighs review quantity, recency, and keyword relevance heavily. A practice with 200 reviews from the last 12 months will outrank a practice with 800 reviews that mostly date from 2019.

Build a system: every patient gets an automated review request 90 minutes after their appointment. Track response rate and tune the message until at least 25% of requests convert.

The mistake we see most

Practices set up GBP, optimize it once, and forget it. The map pack is competitive — your neighbours are posting weekly and collecting reviews. If you're static, you're falling.

If you don't have time for that, that's exactly what a Tier 2 program covers. Either way, this is the first lever to pull.