Dental Google Ads Audit: Why We Fixed the Website Before the Ads

Most people asking for a dental Google Ads audit expect us to look at keywords and bids. We start somewhere else: the page the ads send patients to. If that page is slow or awkward on a phone, every click is paid for and wasted, and the conclusion drawn afterwards is that “Google Ads doesn’t work for us”.

This is what happened when a dental clinic owner asked us for Google Ads, and what a dental Google Ads audit should cover in your own practice.

The request: Google Ads for a dental landing page

During a routine scan of dental clinic websites in our area, we found a single-page site failing Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment on mobile. We sent the owner a short summary of what we’d found.

His reply was quick and clear:

> “Hey, thank you for reaching out. I am looking for One-time Google-Ads service.”

He wanted traffic, not an audit. We don’t run ad campaigns, and we don’t recommend sending paid traffic to a page that hasn’t been checked first, so we suggested a call to go through the findings before any campaign was planned.

What the landing page audit found

A single-page site puts the whole booking decision on one URL. There’s no second page to recover a visitor who gets stuck, so every problem costs more. We found two.

Problem 1: the mobile menu covered the booking button

On a phone, the sticky menu took up roughly a third of the screen. Worse, after a visitor tapped a menu link, the menu stayed open over the content.

Every visitor had to find and tap the close icon before they could book. On a paid campaign, that’s friction applied to every click you buy.

Problem 2: the page failed Core Web Vitals on mobile

The main cause was one hero image: high resolution, uncompressed, and served at desktop size to phones.

A failing page hurts a campaign twice. Patients leave before the page appears, and Google’s ad quality rating includes landing page experience, so a poor page can make each click cost more. For the details of why the hero image matters so much, see what slows down a dental website.

The call: changing the order

On the call we shared the screen, showed the menu problem on a phone and walked through the speed figures. The point wasn’t to sell a different service. It was to be clear about what the ad budget would buy:

> “If you run Google Ads right now, you are paying for people to land on a page that works against them. Some will leave before it loads. Some of the rest will give up on the menu before they reach the booking form.”

Marketing brings the traffic; the website decides what happens to it. The owner chose to fix the site first.

What we fixed

The owner put the fixes in over the following four weeks.

A follow-up check a month later confirmed the results had held. The site wasn’t redesigned: same brand, same copy, same offer. Two engineering fixes made it ready for paid traffic.

What a dental Google Ads audit should check

Whether you’re about to start ads or already running them, these are the checks we’d make. We don’t manage campaigns ourselves, but these are the questions to put to whoever does.

On the landing page

• Speed on a phone. Put the landing page, not the homepage, into PageSpeed Insights and read the mobile tab. Largest Contentful Paint should be under 2.5 seconds.
• The booking button. Can a patient see it and tap it within the first screen, without a menu or pop-up in the way?
• One page per treatment. An implant ad should land on an implant page, not the homepage.
• The form or booking widget. Fill it in on your own phone. If nothing happens when you tap Submit, see why website form submissions are slow.

In the ads account

• Conversion tracking. Are calls, form enquiries and online bookings counted as conversions? Without this, the account is optimising blind.
• Search terms. Look at what people actually typed. Add negative keywords for searches you don’t want, such as NHS-only or job searches if you’re private.
• Location targeting. Check whether ads show to people in your area, or also to people merely interested in it.
• Ad schedule. If ads run when nobody answers the phone, make sure online booking or call answering is in place for those hours.

Against the rules

Dental adverts must follow the General Dental Council’s guidance on advertising. Don’t call anyone a “specialist” unless they’re on a GDC specialist list, and make sure prices and claims are accurate. Marketing for dental practices covers this in more detail.

When running ads before an audit is fine

Auditing first isn’t always necessary. It’s reasonable to go ahead when:

• Mobile LCP is under 2.5 seconds and Search Console shows “Good” Core Web Vitals for the landing page
• The page was checked in the last three months and hasn’t changed since
• It’s a small, deliberate test on a page you already know converts

An audit is worth doing first when Core Web Vitals show “Failed” or “Needs improvement”, when the site has changed since it was last checked, or when enquiries from phones are much lower than from computers.

If the page is fine but calls go unanswered while the team is with patients, the leak is on the phone, not the website; see what an AI receptionist handles for dentists.