What you are allowed to display on your dentist website: titles, degrees, specialties

On the "Our practice" or "Our team" page, every word carries weight: title, degrees, training, procedures performed. It is also where the French Dental Council (Ordre national des chirurgiens-dentistes) looks first when a fellow dentist files a complaint. Our guide what the Dental Council allows on a dentist website gives the general rule: information is allowed, promotion is not. Here, we apply it to a single point, how the dentist is presented, using the wording the Dental Council itself recommends.

One reserved title, for three specialties

In French dentistry, three specialties exist: orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics (orthopédie dento-faciale), oral surgery (chirurgie orale) and oral medicine (médecine bucco-dentaire). The matching title is reserved for dentists qualified in one of them and listed on the corresponding register of the Dental Council, after the national degree that leads to it or a qualification committee.

All other dentists, including those who place implants all week long, are general dentists. They can describe their practice in detail, as long as they do not imply a title. The Dental Council writes that information about a discipline must not "be confused with existing specialties" nor "set them up as nonexistent specialties". An "implant dentistry specialty" or a "cosmetic dentistry specialty" does not exist. Writing it amounts to claiming a qualification you do not have.

This point is sensitive for oral surgery, which is a recognized specialty. Placing an implant or extracting a tooth is a surgical procedure that every dentist is entitled to perform, and the Dental Council specifies that these procedures cannot be presented as oral surgery. You can write that you perform implant surgery, but not that you practice oral surgery without the title.

Implant dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, periodontics: the right wording

The Dental Council's national board has published recommendations on professional communication, adopted in 2021 and updated in June 2026, available on the Dental Council's professional communication page. They allow a dentist to describe "the procedures usually performed", with implant dentistry and periodontics given as examples. One condition: if you focus or limit your practice, your communication "must match the reality" of that practice.

Here is wording that stays within this line:

• "Dr X practices implant dentistry" or "places dental implants", with no title or adjective.
• "Practice focused on periodontics and implant dentistry", if that is true day to day.
• For the three areas close to a specialty, the Dental Council gives the exact sentence. It begins with "focuses or limits their practice" ("oriente ou limite sa pratique"), followed by "to surgical dentistry procedures", "to orthodontic procedures" or "to the care of patients with special needs".
• A training course named with its provider and year: "Continuing education in implant surgery, provider Y, 2024".
• The subjects completed as part of continuing professional development (DPC).

The common thread is the word "verifiable". You remain responsible for your statements and must be able to prove each training course in the event of a dispute. Listing a course you never took is among the Dental Council's examples of breaches. The Dental Council regulates the form; it does not forbid the substance.

University degrees: the national board's list is authoritative

The Dental Council's national board recognizes degrees, titles and positions. It publishes the list of recognized degrees, titles and positions. It includes national degrees, academic-hospital, academic and hospital titles, miscellaneous titles, and recognized university diplomas (DU) and inter-university diplomas (DIU). If your degree is on it, you write it exactly as listed, under its original name.

If your degree is not on it, you can still mention it, with a clarification. The Dental Council's recommendations require this information to be "followed by the statement that these are neither specialties nor degrees recognized by the national board of the Dental Council". Place that sentence right under the degree, not at the bottom of the page: the patient must read it in the same glance.

Three habits prevent mistakes:

1. Check the list before writing: a DU can be recognized under one specific title and not under another.
2. Have your degrees registered with your local (departmental) council. A degree that was never declared counts as unrecognized.
3. Keep it to a few lines: the Dental Council advises you to "select, for each point, the few most significant items".

Useful information people forget

Article R.4127-215-1 of the French Public Health Code (code de la santé publique) lets you communicate about your skills, your practices, your background and the conditions of your practice. The recommendations turn this into a concrete list, and nearly all of it is missing from the websites we read.

• Your background: a summary of your career, where and how you have practiced, the year of your dissertation.
• The languages you speak with patients.
• The team: names and roles.
• Your equipment: cone beam CT (CBCT, a low-dose 3D scanner), digital impressions (taken with a camera, no putty), microscope. Described, not bragged about.
• Your status with the French national health insurance (Assurance Maladie), with your fees and payment methods. Our article on dental fees on your website details this obligation.
• Practice accessibility, directions, hours, how to book an appointment.
• Your most significant publications and honors recognized by the French Republic.
• Membership in a learned society or academy: as is if it appears on the list of recognized titles and positions, otherwise with the same clarification as an unrecognized degree. When in doubt, your local council decides.

The Dental Council adds a rule of tone: this information is given "without promotion and without comparison". You can mention a CBCT; it does not put the practice "at the cutting edge" of anything. Our dental practice website page shows where this presentation fits.

The words that tip a page into advertising

The recommendations give examples of what does not pass:

• Superlatives or comparisons: "we are more qualified than", "better equipped than", or any adjective that places the practice above others.
• The word "expert" with no recognized title behind it: "cosmetic dentistry expert" is self-proclaimed.
• A specialty that does not exist, or a title implied by a word like "implantologist".
• A training course listed without having been taken.
• Crossed-out prices and discounts: "three implants for the price of two", "the third crown at half price". The Dental Council sees these as encouraging unnecessary treatment.
• Patient testimonials, ratings displayed on the website and before-and-after photos, which the Dental Council cites as an example of what can suggest a guaranteed result.
• The ordinary presented as exceptional: sterilization that follows the rules is not "state of the art".

These limits follow the practice onto its social accounts: see what to post on a dental practice's Instagram.

A simple test before publishing: every word must be backed by a document, whether a degree, a training certificate or an equipment invoice. Anything with nothing behind it comes out.

Before and after for a fictional practice

Take a fictional practice, Cabinet dentaire des Tilleuls, and Dr. Aline Berger. Nothing below describes a real practice, and the training courses mentioned are imaginary.

The right-hand column says more true things, with fewer adjectives. That is the whole spirit of the Dental Council's text.

What Google and AI read in these details

These details are not just about staying compliant: they are also what search engines read. "Implant dentaire" (dental implant) is searched 33,100 times a month in France (Semrush, August 2026). A patient who adds your city first finds the pages that contain those words, described simply: the procedure, the equipment, the dentist who performs it. Google reads "practices implant dentistry" just as well as a fake title, without exposing you.

AI goes further. 56.6% of French people already use artificial intelligence, including to find a dentist (Arcom and Médiamétrie, April 2026). Asked for a "dentist who places implants and speaks English in Lyon", an AI looks through the text of pages for a dentist, a procedure, a language, an address. Every allowed detail in this article is a potential answer. Our guide how AI chooses a dentist looks at this mechanism up close.

The line is the same on both sides: describe precisely, in patients' words, without adjectives. That is what dental SEO requires as we practice it. The dentist's profile is one page, and it calls for another: the page for each treatment, where the same principle applies.

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