How should a practice think about city and neighborhood targeting?
Distance matters more for a dentist than for many trades, because people rarely travel far for a routine visit. Google describes local ranking as a mix of relevance, distance and prominence, and links and mentions feed the prominence part. So your plan should name the city and the neighborhoods you truly serve.
A single-location practice usually focuses on one city, with a second ring of nearby areas. A multi-location group should plan each location separately, with its own page, its own listing and its own set of local mentions. Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere, because mismatched details across listings are a common and avoidable problem.
Anchor text should stay natural. Treatment words such as implants or emergency care can appear, but a long run of identical commercial anchors looks engineered.
