How to Set Up a Google Ads Search Campaign for Dentists, Step by Step

This is a step-by-step walkthrough of building a Google Ads search campaign for a dental practice, with the default settings I change along the way. Several of Google's defaults are designed to spend more of your money, so the details matter.

It assumes conversion tracking is already set up. For a dental practice I track three things: appointment forms, calls from ads and clicks on the phone number on your website.

1. Create the campaign

Click the plus icon to create a new campaign.

Objective: choose "Create a campaign without guidance". It gives you every setting.
Campaign type: choose Search. Not Performance Max, not Display.
Name: something clear, such as "S - Dentist - [your city]".

2. Choose bidding

Google pushes you toward automated bidding here. What you pick depends on your account:

New account with no conversion data: do not focus on conversions yet. Choose clicks for now. After setup you can switch to manual CPC.
Existing account with around 30 conversions in 30 days: you can focus on conversions and set a target cost per action, for example $60 per lead. That is a goal for Google to aim at, not a guarantee.

Don't choose conversion value. That is for online stores.

3. Turn off the network defaults

Search partners and the Display Network are ticked by default. Untick both. They take your ads beyond Google search and waste a lot of money.

4. Set tight location targeting

Use advanced search and target your suburb, or a radius around your practice. Don't target a whole city. It is a huge area with a lot of competing practices.

Then open Location options. The default is "people in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your locations". Change it to people in or regularly in your locations. Otherwise your ads show to people outside your area who merely showed interest in it.

5. Other settings

Audience segments: leave blank. Let the keywords do the targeting.
Ad schedule: optional. You might restrict ads to the hours someone can answer the phone.
AI Max for search: leave it off. From what I've seen so far it isn't worth the extra spend.
Keyword and asset generation: skip it.

6. Ad groups and keywords

Name the ad group after the keywords it targets. Add tightly related keywords only, such as "dentist" plus your suburb, in two match types:

Phrase match, written in quotation marks. The search must contain your phrase but can include other words.
Exact match, written in square brackets. The search must match your keyword.

Don't mix unrelated treatments in one ad group. Whitening, root canals and implants belong in separate ad groups or separate campaigns.

7. Write the ad

Final URL: the page people land on. Make it match the ad.
Headlines: 30 characters each. You can add up to 15 and Google shows three. I add five or six, so the combinations still read well.
Descriptions: 90 characters each. Add up to four and Google shows two.
Assets: add your call asset, sitelinks, images, business name and logo.

8. Budget and publish

Set your daily budget and publish. The campaign will show as under review at first.

9. Change the bid strategy if you need to

Go to the campaign settings, open Bidding, click Change bid strategy and select a strategy directly. Choose manual CPC or maximize clicks. With manual CPC, go into the ad group and set your maximum bid for each keyword.

If you want me to look at your account and tell you what I would fix first, book a strategy call.