DDS Web Solutions
Glossary

Dental Marketing Glossary

This glossary defines 43 terms that dental and medical practice owners hear from marketers, Google, and AI tools. Each entry gives the short answer first, then what it means for a practice, and links to the source that defines the term where one exists.

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Local search and Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile
The free listing that shows a business on Google Search and Google Maps, including its name, address, phone number, hours, photos, reviews, and posts. It was formerly called Google My Business.
For your practice: For most practices it is the first thing a nearby patient sees, often before the website. Accurate hours, the right primary category, and real office photos matter more than any single setting.
Learn more: Set up and optimize a Google Business Profile Source: Google Business Profile Help
Local pack (map pack)
The block of map results, usually three businesses, that Google shows for searches with local intent such as "dentist near me". Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence.
For your practice: Distance is out of your control, so the work goes into relevance (categories, services, website content) and prominence (reviews, links, and how well known the practice is).
Learn more: Local dental SEO programs Source: How Google ranks local results
NAP consistency
Keeping the practice name, address, and phone number (NAP) identical everywhere they appear: the website, Google Business Profile, directories, insurance finders, and social profiles.
For your practice: Mismatches usually come from a move, a rebrand, or an old tracking number. Fixing them removes doubt for search engines and for patients who call the wrong number.
Learn more: Build local citations for a dental practice
Local citation
Any mention of a business's name, address, and phone number on another website, such as a directory, a health plan's provider search, or a local chamber listing.
For your practice: A handful of accurate, relevant citations beats hundreds of low-quality directory listings. Start with the major data aggregators and dental or health directories patients actually use.
Learn more: Build local citations for a dental practice
Review generation
A repeatable process for asking real patients to leave an honest review, usually by text or email after a visit, with a direct link to the review form.
For your practice: Steady reviews over time look more natural and help more than a sudden burst. Google's policies prohibit offering incentives for reviews and selectively asking only happy patients.
Learn more: Build a review generation system Source: Google Maps user-generated content policy
GBP services
The list of offerings on a Google Business Profile that patients can browse under Services. Owners pick suggested items for their category or add custom services, optionally with descriptions and prices.
For your practice: Put treatments here instead of stuffing extra categories. Keep custom service names free of prices, phone numbers, and personal information so Google does not reject them.
Learn more: Optimize GBP services, attributes, booking, and Q&A Source: Manage your services on your Business Profile
Business attributes
Yes or No details on a Google Business Profile such as accessibility, parking, amenities, and payment options. Attributes appear on Search and Maps and can make a business eligible for attribute-based searches.
For your practice: Mark only what the office truly offers. Some attributes come from visitor input, and Google notes edits usually review in minutes but can take longer.
Learn more: Optimize GBP services, attributes, booking, and Q&A Source: Manage your business attributes
GBP Q&A
The questions and answers section on a Google Business Profile where owners and managers can reply to public questions about the business. Availability and layout can vary by country and category.
For your practice: Answer with facts that match hours, services, and parking on the profile. Never confirm someone is a patient in a public reply, and report answers that break Maps policies.
Learn more: Optimize GBP services, attributes, booking, and Q&A Source: Edit your Business Profile

SEO and technical website terms

SEO (search engine optimization)
The work of making a website easier for search engines to crawl, understand, and rank for the searches that matter, through content, site structure, technical fixes, and links from other sites.
For your practice: For a practice, good SEO mostly means one clear page per service and location, fast mobile pages, and content that answers the questions patients ask before they book.
Learn more: Search engine optimization services Source: Google Search Central SEO starter guide
Core Web Vitals
Three Google metrics for real-user page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading, good at 2.5 seconds or less), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness, good at 200 milliseconds or less), and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability, good at 0.1 or less), measured at the 75th percentile of visits.
For your practice: Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay in March 2024. Large hero videos, heavy chat widgets, and unoptimized photos are the usual causes of poor scores on practice websites.
Learn more: Core Web Vitals and your practice website Source: web.dev: Web Vitals
Mobile-first indexing
Google's practice of using the mobile version of a page's content for indexing and ranking.
For your practice: If a service, phone number, or FAQ is hidden or missing on the mobile layout, Google may not count it. Check the phone view of every important page, not just the desktop design.
Learn more: Optimize your website for mobile patients Source: Google Search Central: mobile-first indexing
Schema markup (structured data)
Code that labels the facts on a page in the shared schema.org vocabulary, such as a business's name, address, hours, services, and reviews, so machines can read them without guessing. Google recommends the JSON-LD format where a site's setup allows it.
For your practice: Markup should only describe what is actually visible on the page. It helps search and AI systems connect the practice, its locations, and its services as one consistent entity.
Learn more: Use schema markup to improve search results Source: Google: introduction to structured data
parentOrganization
A schema.org property for the larger organization that this organization is a subOrganization of, when one exists.
For your practice: On a dental office page, parentOrganization can point a Dentist entry at the group's Organization entry. It records the relationship. Google's Organization rich-result docs do not list it as a required property, and it does not replace a separate page and profile for each office.
Learn more: AI search for multi-location dental groups Source: schema.org: parentOrganization
Canonical URL
The single preferred address for a page when the same or very similar content can be reached at more than one URL, declared with a rel="canonical" link in the page head.
For your practice: Practices often end up with duplicates from tracking parameters, old page builders, or both www and non-www versions. A clear canonical tells search engines which one to show.
Source: Google: consolidate duplicate URLs
XML sitemap
A file that lists the URLs a site wants search engines to find, optionally with the date each page last changed.
For your practice: It should list only pages you want indexed. A sitemap full of redirects, thin pages, or noindex pages sends mixed signals.
Source: Google: sitemaps overview
robots.txt
A plain text file at the root of a site that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not crawl. It controls crawling, not indexing: a page blocked in robots.txt can still appear in results if other sites link to it.
For your practice: To keep a page out of search results, use a noindex tag on a crawlable page instead of a robots.txt block.
Source: Google: introduction to robots.txt
Noindex
A robots meta tag or HTTP header that asks search engines not to show a page in their results. The crawler has to be able to fetch the page to see the instruction.
For your practice: Useful for thank-you pages, internal forms, and duplicate landing pages for ads, so they do not compete with the main service pages.
Source: Google: block indexing with noindex
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's search quality rater guidelines use to judge content, with trust as the most important. Google applies extra weight to topics that can affect health or money.
For your practice: Dental and medical content falls in that category, so pages should show who provides the care, real credentials, and clear contact details, and avoid vague or exaggerated claims.
Source: Google: creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Web accessibility (WCAG)
Designing pages so people with disabilities can use them, for example with screen readers, keyboards, captions, and readable color contrast. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the W3C are the common reference; version 2.2 was published in October 2023.
For your practice: Many accessibility fixes, such as descriptive link text, headings in order, and labeled form fields, also make a site easier for every patient and for search engines to read.
Learn more: Accessibility on our website Source: W3C: WCAG 2.2

AI search and discoverability

AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google Search features that generate an answer with AI and link to supporting web pages. Google states there are no extra technical requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in them beyond normal SEO fundamentals.
For your practice: Pages that answer a question directly near the top, are crawlable, and are backed by consistent facts across the web are the ones most likely to be cited.
Learn more: Optimize your website for AI search Source: Google: AI features and your website
AI search visibility
How often, and how accurately, AI assistants and AI-powered search features mention or recommend a business when people ask questions it should be the answer to. It is sometimes called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO). Google says that, for its own AI features, this work is still SEO.
For your practice: The basics are the same as good SEO: clear entity facts, consistent listings, original answer-first content, and pages AI crawlers are allowed to read.
Learn more: AI search visibility services
Answer-first content
Writing that states the direct answer to a question in the first sentence or two, then adds detail, steps, and context below it.
For your practice: It suits both a patient skimming on a phone and an AI system looking for a quotable answer. This glossary is written that way.
Entity
A distinct, identifiable thing such as a business, person, place, or service that search engines and AI systems store facts about and connect to other things.
For your practice: When the practice name, locations, services, and profiles agree everywhere, search and AI systems can treat them as one entity instead of several partial ones.
llms.txt
A proposed convention, published at llmstxt.org in September 2024, for a Markdown file at /llms.txt that gives AI tools a short summary of a site and links to its most useful pages. It is a proposal, not a search engine requirement, and Google says Google Search ignores it.
For your practice: It costs little to publish and can give other AI tools a clean map of the site, but it does not change Google rankings or AI Overviews. Ours is at /llms.txt.
Source: llmstxt.org
IndexNow
An open protocol that lets a website notify participating search engines that a URL was added, updated, or deleted, instead of waiting for the next crawl.
For your practice: It helps new or changed pages get picked up faster by the engines that support it. It does not guarantee indexing or rankings.
Source: IndexNow

Measurement and analytics

Google Search Console
A free Google service that shows how a site appears in Google Search: which searches show its pages, how many clicks and impressions they get, which pages are indexed, and any crawling or usability problems Google found.
For your practice: A site does not need Search Console to appear in Google, but it is the only place to see the actual searches that bring patients to the practice website. Verify the domain once and check the Performance and Pages reports monthly. Since August 31, 2026, it also has a Generative AI performance report showing how often links to the site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Source: Search Console Help: about Search Console
CTR (click-through rate)
The share of people who click a link or ad after seeing it: clicks divided by impressions.
For your practice: In Google Search Console, a page with many impressions but a low CTR often needs a clearer title and description that match what people searched.
Conversion (key event)
An action that counts as a result, such as a call, a booking request, or a form submission. Google Analytics 4 calls these key events; conversion rate is conversions divided by visits or clicks.
For your practice: Decide which actions count before running ads or judging SEO. Without conversion tracking, it is impossible to tell which marketing brings new patients.
Learn more: Set up conversion tracking on a practice website
Call tracking
Using distinct phone numbers for different sources, such as ads, the website, and the Google Business Profile, so calls can be counted and credited to the channel that produced them.
For your practice: Keep the main number consistent on listings and use tracking numbers carefully so NAP consistency is not broken.
Learn more: Use call tracking to measure marketing ROI
UTM parameters
Tags added to the end of a link, such as utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign, that tell an analytics tool where a visit came from.
For your practice: Tag links in emails, social posts, QR codes, and the Google Business Profile website button so those visits are not lumped into direct traffic.
Source: Google Analytics Help: URL builders
Engagement rate and bounce rate (GA4)
In Google Analytics 4, an engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key event, or has two or more page views. Engagement rate is the share of sessions that are engaged, and bounce rate is the share that are not.
For your practice: A visitor who reads the hours and calls within a few seconds can still count as a bounce unless the call is tracked as a key event, so read bounce rate alongside conversions.
Learn more: Read a Google Analytics dashboard Source: Google Analytics Help: engagement rate and bounce rate

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