Elvora, an SEO firm that works with dental and orthodontic practices, published a comparison of twelve orthodontic SEO companies in the US this month. White Glove Orthodontist came in third, behind HIP Creative and Kaleidoscope.
I’d normally be skeptical of a list like this. Most “best agency” lists in our industry are written by an agency, and the agency writing it usually ends up first. Elvora actually checked that. They read the other lists ranking for the same search and found that most of them put their own publisher at the top.
They did the opposite. They said in the first paragraph that they run one of the twelve firms, and they ranked themselves twelfth. Then they scored everyone on two things: what each company publishes about its work, and what a practice owner can verify before signing anything. That’s a fair way to do it, and it’s why I’m comfortable sharing the result.
You can read the full review here: Best Orthodontic SEO Companies in 2026.
What the review said about us
We were one of only three companies out of twelve that publish a price. Everyone else quotes you after a sales call. Our management is $2,500 a month, month to month, and it’s on the website.
They described us as the pick for solo doctors who want an orthodontist as their advisor rather than an account manager. Their reasoning was that the strategy comes from someone who has dealt with insurance verification, consult flow, and slow months in his own practice, not someone who read about them.
That’s accurate. I didn’t start as a marketer. I started as an orthodontist who needed patients.
On their separate transparency scorecard, which only measures what firms publish about price, contracts, and account ownership, we were third again.
Transparency scorecard, points out of 24
White Glove scored 11, third of twelve
Source: Elvora, Best Orthodontic SEO Companies in 2026, checked September 2026. The score only measures what each firm publishes. A zero means the information isn’t public, not that the firm does bad work.
What they criticized, and they’re right
They called out the 12,000x traffic growth figure on our homepage. Their point was that it’s a real number, but not one a practice can use to compare against its own results.
That’s fair. A percentage is only as meaningful as the starting point, and a number that big mostly tells you the starting point was close to zero.
I’d rather address that here than pretend it wasn’t mentioned. If we’re going to tell practices to question their marketing company’s numbers, ours should hold up too.
An orthodontist running an SEO company
Google’s own quality guidelines talk about E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. For a healthcare site, the first one matters most. Has the person writing this actually done it?
Here’s where our experience comes from:
- I’m a practicing orthodontist and own Elate Orthodontics, an ABO board-certified practice with offices in West Frisco, North Frisco, and The Colony, plus Tribute Family Dentistry in Frisco.
- I run theorthodontistnearme.com, a directory of more than 850 orthodontic practices built around ownership transparency and board certification.
- I write for Orthotown.
The practical part is the one that matters. Everything we recommend to a client, we’ve already done on our own offices. When a change to a Google Business Profile category works or doesn’t, we see it in our own phone calls first.
We believe in data, not promises
One of the red flags in Elvora’s review is a monthly report that’s nothing but rankings. I agree with that completely. Most SEO reporting is built to reassure you rather than inform you.
That’s the reason we built the WGO SEO Tool.
What a single ranking number hides
A practice doesn’t have one Google ranking. It has a different one on every street.
When someone searches “orthodontist near me,” Google shows the map results closest to wherever they’re standing. So you can be first in the map at your front door and nowhere two miles away. Most ranking reports check from one spot, usually near your office, and tell you you’re doing fine.
One search, or twenty five
Your ranking changes block by block
A typical ranking report
One search, usually from your own office
The WGO map grid
25 searches, 2 miles apart, 8 miles across
The purple dot is your office. The free map uses your specialty and city, for example “orthodontist frisco”.
We saw this in our own data. The first seven practices that ran our free map all averaged between second and third place, because the grid was centered on their own office. Every one of them looked great. That wasn’t useful to anyone, so we changed the free map to use your city keyword across eight miles instead. It’s a less flattering picture and a much more honest one.
Average map position, first seven free runs
Every practice looked like it was in the top three
Dashed line = position 3. Shorter is better, 1 means first in the map.
WGO SEO Tool data, 22 to 26 September 2026. Keyword “orthodontist near me” on a 4 mile grid centered on each office. Practice names withheld.
What the WGO SEO Tool reports
The tool is at app.whitegloveorthodontist.com. It was built for orthodontists and dentists, not adapted from a general marketing tool.
What the report covers
Map grid. 25 searches around your office, so you see where you rank block by block and who beats you where.
Keyword positions. Where you show up in regular search results for the terms patients actually type.
Site check. A crawl of your website that names the actual pages with problems, not just a count.
Competitors. The practices beating you on the map, plus any you name yourself.
Links. The websites linking to you, compared with the practices ahead of you.
Every finding ends with a plain instruction: what to open and what to change. If something is wrong, the report tells you where.
The first map is free. Single sections start at $10, and the full monthly report is $149 on the Solo plan.
It works for two kinds of people. Practice owners who want to know whether the company they already pay is moving anything. And agencies or consultants who want an affordable report for a client, with the context behind the number.
If you’re shopping for an orthodontic SEO company
Elvora ends their review with ten questions to ask any firm before you sign. They’re good questions. Who owns your accounts if you leave. Whether they’ll take your competitor two towns over. What’s actually in the monthly report.
Ask them of us too.
Or skip the sales call, run a free map, and see where you stand before you talk to anyone.
Dr. Kevin Baharvand, DMD, is an orthodontist and practice owner in Frisco, Texas, and the founder of White Glove Orthodontist. He writes about search, websites, and AI visibility for independent dental practice owners.