Because it is difficulty 75 with 0.29 clicks per search in Canada. Seven in ten of those 8,300 monthly searches never reach a website at all, and the ones that do are contested by national health publishers and every orthodontic practice in the country. The aligner cost and comparison terms are difficulty 0 and reach a patient who is deciding.
Orthodontics is the hardest specialty to reach through its own vocabulary. "Braces" draws 8,300 Canadian searches a month at a keyword difficulty of 75, and returns 0.29 clicks per search — seven in ten of those searches never reach any website. "Orthodontist"
Orthodontics is the hardest specialty to reach through its own vocabulary. "Braces" draws 8,300 Canadian searches a month at a keyword difficulty of 75, and returns 0.29 clicks per search — seven in ten of those searches never reach any website. "Orthodontist" is 4,700 at difficulty 62. Neither is a realistic first target.
What's Included
Primary Term Page
The page almost no Canadian practice in this field has built, aimed at the term with the clearest intent and least competition.
Question-Level Content
One page per real question — cost, recovery, candidacy, availability — rather than a services list that answers none completely.
Google Business Profile Depth
Categories, services, photos and review process, which decide the share of local searches that never reach a website.
Answer-Ready Structure
Question-shaped headings and FAQ schema, since cost and comparison queries are where AI Overviews appear most.
Consult-Level Reporting
Tracked calls and forms attributed per page, reported as consults rather than clicks.
Where does the opportunity sit?
The reachable demand sits one step sideways, in the aligner vocabulary. "Invisalign cost" draws 5,000 Canadian searches a month at difficulty 0 and "invisalign vs braces" 1,400, also at 0 — both decision-stage, both uncontested.
That is the opposite of what most orthodontic sites do. They build a deep "Braces" page and a thin "Invisalign" page, when the search data points the other way entirely.
The other reachable lever is local. Both head terms show a map pack, and with clicks per search below 0.30 the Business Profile decides a larger share of the outcome than the website does.
What we build
A small set of pages that each answer one question completely, plus the tracking to say which of them produced the call.
- Aligner cost and comparison pages, where the uncontested volume actually sits
- A treatment-timeline page, since "how long" follows "how much" in every orthodontic decision
- Adult orthodontics content, a growing segment most practices address in one sentence
- Early interceptive treatment for parents, searched separately and served badly
- Google Business Profile work, because both head terms return under 0.30 clicks per search
How is it measured?
Tracked calls and form submissions attributed to the page that produced them, reported as consults rather than clicks. We separate the streams that behave differently rather than averaging them into one number.
And we say plainly when a month is too short a window to read anything into.
What we will not claim
We will not promise case or patient volume. Marketing influences how many of the right people reach you and whether that is measured; what happens after is clinical and commercial judgement.
We also will not publish clinical claims, availability or recovery timelines the practice has not approved. In Canadian dental advertising that exposure sits with the practice.
Canadian search demand (Ahrefs, October 2026)
| Search term | Monthly searches | Difficulty | Avg. CPC | Clicks per search |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| orthodontist | 4,700 | 62 | $3.00 | 0.30 |
| braces | 8,300 | 75 | $1.20 | — |
FAQ
Why not build for "braces"?
Is Invisalign the better angle even for a braces-heavy practice?
As a search entry point, usually yes — the volume is open and the patient arrives comparing options. The comparison page is where a braces-heavy practice wins, because it can honestly set out the cases where fixed appliances are the better clinical answer. That honesty is what makes it credible.
Does paid search work for orthodontics?
At $3.00 a click for "orthodontist" it needs a real case value and tight targeting to make sense. Aligner cost terms at $2.50 usually perform better because the intent is clearer. The budget is most often wasted on broad brand traffic and on ads pointing at a homepage.
Do AI Overviews affect this?
On research-stage questions, heavily. In our 100-keyword Canadian sample, 94% of cost queries and 92% of comparison queries returned an AI Overview, while searches naming a city returned one only 10% of the time. Cost and candidacy pages need to be quotable; local terms still resolve to the map pack.
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