Most dental practices have decent websites and bad local SEO. They show up for their own brand name and almost nothing else. A 5 minute audit will surface the gaps you need to make a confident pitch. Here is the exact sequence.
Step 1: Search the practice on Google Maps (60 seconds)
Type the practice name plus city. Look at the listing. Is it claimed? How many reviews? What is the average rating? When was the last review? Has the owner responded to any reviews? Are the hours current? Is there a recent photo? A practice with under 30 reviews, no recent owner responses, and no posts in the last 90 days is wide open for help.
Step 2: Check the local pack for high intent queries (90 seconds)
Search "dentist near me" while in the city, or "dentist in [city]" from anywhere. Note which 3 practices appear in the local pack. If your prospect is not there, that is your headline finding. Then search 2 service queries: "teeth whitening [city]" and "emergency dentist [city]." Most general practices ignore service level keywords, so the local pack is often dominated by 1 or 2 specialized practices. That is the gap you can close.
Step 3: View source on the website (90 seconds)
Open the practice website and view the page source (right click, View Page Source). Search for "@type":"Dentist" or "@type":"LocalBusiness". If neither appears, the site has no schema markup. That is a fast technical fix that materially impacts AI search visibility. Also search for "FAQPage" schema. Almost no dental site has it, and adding 5 FAQs about insurance, hours, and emergency care is a quick win.
Step 4: Open the contact and services pages (60 seconds)
Look for inconsistent NAP (name, address, phone). Check if the phone number on the contact page matches Google Business Profile and matches the footer of every other page. Inconsistent NAP across the site or across citation directories is a top 5 ranking killer for local businesses. It takes minutes to spot and hours of citation cleanup to fix, which is exactly the kind of work clients pay retainers for.
Step 5: Pull a sample competitor and compare (60 seconds)
Find the dentist that ranks 1 in the local pack for the same city. Compare review counts, response rate, photo counts, and post frequency. Now you have a concrete talking point: "Practice A has 287 reviews and responds to 80 percent of them. You have 41 reviews and have responded to 4. That is the gap between you and the top spot."