Agency, freelancer or DIY: how to choose who handles your dental practice's SEO

Sooner or later, the question comes up at the practice: who is going to handle SEO? You, between patients? Your dental assistant? A freelancer? An agency?

None of these is bad in itself. What matters is knowing what each path takes, what it makes possible and what it risks. And, if you hand the work off, asking the right questions before signing.

SEO (search engine optimization) covers everything that makes your practice findable on Google, on the map and in AI tools. We describe it on our dental SEO page. Here, we only talk about choosing the person who takes it on.

Doing it yourself, or with your dental assistant

What it takes. Regular time, not just at the start. Google and AI tools reread your practice constantly. So you need someone who keeps a time slot every week, even in busy weeks. Often it is the dental assistant or the front desk, with the dentist signing off on the text.

What is doable. A lot, and important things too:

• claiming the practice's Google Business Profile and filling it in field by field, as described on our Google Business Profile for dentists page;
• writing the name, address, phone number and opening hours the same way everywhere;
• writing the fees page, which is a legal requirement anyway;
• putting in writing the answers to the questions patients ask on the phone;
• checking from time to time what ChatGPT or Gemini say about the practice.

None of this requires a paid tool. It requires rigor and time.

What is harder. Building a fast website that reads well on a phone, with one page per treatment, and that AI crawlers can read too. Keeping up with what changes at Google, like the arrival of AI Overviews in France on July 22, 2026. These are professions in their own right, and they change fast. Our dental practice website page describes what a website must contain, and our article on the seven mistakes on dental practice websites covers what it must not contain. When a site already exists, the checklist for deciding whether to redesign your dental practice website or fix it helps you avoid an unnecessary redesign.

The risk. Time. SEO comes after patients, which is normal, and then after everything else. The website stays half-built, the profile goes out of date, nobody measures anything. The other risk is copying a practice seen elsewhere without knowing it does not work for a dentist: patient testimonials and star ratings displayed on the website, which article R.4127-215-1 rules out, and before-and-after photos, which the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes) cites as suggesting a guaranteed result.

Hiring a freelancer

What it takes. A single point of contact, who does the work they sell. Time at the start to explain your practice, your treatments and your rules, then a regular check-in to approve the text.

What is doable. The essentials: the website, the Google Business Profile, the treatment pages, monthly follow-up. Their strength is the direct relationship: you talk to the person doing the work. Many freelancers come from sectors where advertising is allowed: restaurants, tradespeople, retail. That is not a flaw, but it is something to check.

What is harder. Anything that requires several skill sets at once: writing, technical work, measurement, keeping up with AI. A freelancer often combines two or three of these, rarely all of them. They also have only one pair of hands, and a project underway elsewhere can delay yours.

The risk. Dependence on a single person. If they change careers or leave with the logins, the practice is on its own. The question of who owns the website and the domain name, below, is decisive here.

Working with an agency

What it takes. A more formal setup: a contract, a schedule, a point of contact who is not always the person doing the work. You still need to set aside time, because nobody can write your treatment pages without you.

What is doable. Several skill sets under one roof: someone who writes, someone who builds, someone who measures. Continuity if one person leaves. Monitoring of what changes at Google and in AI tools. Some agencies work only with healthcare professions, others with every sector. Either kind may know your rules, or not.

What is harder. Closeness. A salesperson, then a project manager, then a writer you will never meet. The practice becomes one file among many.

The risk. Signing on the strength of a presentation, without knowing what will be done each month or what you will keep if you stop. And, here again, a team that applies to dentists recipes designed for other professions.

A fictional practice to illustrate the choice

Take a fictional practice, Cabinet de la Fontaine: two dentists, an implant suite, a Google Business Profile that has never been claimed, a website that dates back to when the practice opened. One dental assistant, Camille, enjoys these topics and has a free slot on Thursdays.

The practice starts with what it can do on its own. Camille claims the profile, corrects the hours, adds photos of the premises, and has the dentists review a fees page. After a few weeks, the information is the same everywhere.

For the website, Camille will not go further. The practice meets with a freelancer and an agency, and asks them both the same eight questions. The first is clear about the code of ethics and shows healthcare websites they have built. The second promises a top spot on Google before the end of the year and offers a "review collection module" for the front desk. Two red flags in the same meeting.

It was not the status of one or the other that made the decision. It was the answers.

The eight questions to ask before signing

These questions apply to a freelancer and an agency alike. Ask all of them, and write down the answers.

1. Do they know the dentists' code of ethics? The decree of December 22, 2020 allows information and still prohibits buying a priority placement (R.4127-217 II) and advertising for a third party (R.4127-225). Third-party testimonials are prohibited (article R.4127-215-1). Priority placement is prohibited, "paid or not" ("payant ou non"), as the Dental Council puts it (article R.4127-217 II). A provider who discovers these rules during the meeting will also be discovering them during the work. The guide what the Dental Council allows on a dentist website can serve as a checklist.

1. Do they promise a ranking? "Number one on Google," "top spot in three months": red flag. Nobody controls Google's rankings, and such a promise puts you at odds with article R.4127-217 II. An honest provider explains what they will do and how they will measure it, not where you will rank.

1. Do they offer review collection? Red flag. No text prohibits asking for a review, but in 2025 the Dental Council asked the French Ministry of Health to remove online reviews of dentists. A provider who knows your profession will not push you in that direction.

1. Who owns the website and the domain name at the end? The expected answer is one word: you. The domain name in your name, the hosting in your name, the Google Business Profile with your email address as primary owner. Ask for it to be written into the contract.

1. What do they measure? Google rankings are a data point, not a result. What counts is calls, appointment requests and patients who actually come in. Ask how they count calls coming from the website and the profile, and how often you will see those figures.

1. Do they also work on visibility in AI tools? 56.6% of French people already use artificial intelligence, including to find a dentist (Arcom and Médiamétrie, April 2026). An up-to-date provider knows that this visibility is measured as the percentage of answers in which the practice is cited, never as a ranking, and that the crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity do not read JavaScript, the language that displays content through a script. Our AI search page explains what needs to be done.

1. What happens if we stop? Does the website stay online? Does the text belong to you? Are the logins handed back to you? A vague answer here says a lot about everything else.

1. Can we see websites they have built? Open them on your phone. Check whether there is one page per treatment, a fees page, and whether a "website by" credit appears in the footer. For a dentist, that credit is prohibited by article R.4127-225, which forbids any advertising for a commercial company. The Dental Council website publishes the texts that let you check each point.

What doesn't change, whatever you choose

Three things hold true on all three paths.

First: the content comes from you. Nobody else knows how a first implant consultation goes at your practice. A provider shapes it and makes it readable. They do not replace your voice.

Second: the rules are the same for everyone. Dental assistant, freelancer or agency, whoever writes for you follows the same rules. And you, the dentist, are the one answerable to the Dental Council for what is published under your name. The same goes for your social media accounts, and the dividing line is detailed in our article on the dentist as influencer.

Third: the result is measured in patients, not rankings. Whether you do the work or hand it off, keep a simple count of calls and appointment requests, month after month. It is the only figure that tells you whether you made the right choice. To know when to look at it, our article how long before you see results on Google gives benchmarks.

At DeveloppIA, we are happy to answer these eight questions. Whichever path you choose, the next step is to look at where your practice stands today, on Google, on the map and in AI tools.

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