"Hocus Pocus" - How 'Magic" AI-Powered SEO Promises Can Hurt Your Dental Practice

It’s almost Halloween—and Dan Brian and Brian Craig are talking about the real “Hocus Pocus” haunting dental marketing today: agencies promising magic results through fully automated, AI-driven SEO.

In this episode of The Dental Domination Podcast, the DentalScapes co-founders pull back the curtain on the truth behind so-called “AI-powered” marketing solutions that claim to optimize your website automatically. From hallucinated metadata to cheap automation gimmicks, they reveal what really happens when you hand your SEO over COMPLETELY to the machines.

💡 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why “hands-free” AI SEO is more smoke and mirrors than science
• How Google actually views AI-generated content in healthcare
• The red flags to watch for when hiring a marketing agency
• Why responsible, human-guided AI delivers far better ROI
• How to ask smart questions before signing your next SEO contract

Dan and Brian explain why AI is an amplifier—not a replacement—for smart strategy. When used correctly, AI supercharges results. When misused, it can sink your site and your patient trust.

Don’t fall for the magic act. Learn how to separate real innovation from marketing illusion—and why the best agencies combine AI efficiency with expert oversight.

🎧 Listen now to discover:

• The truth about “AI SEO automation” tools
• What real AI-powered marketing should look like
• How to make sure your practice’s marketing isn’t built on Hocus Pocus

Get the complete show notes: https://www.dentalscapes.com/how-magic-ai-powered-seo-promises-can-hurt-your-dental-practice/

👉 Ready to grow your dental practice with marketing that actually works?
Schedule your free strategy call at DentalScapes.com/start

Transcript

0:00

All right, folks, welcome back to the Dental Domination Podcast. I'm here today with my co-founder, Brian Craig. I'm super excited to get into what's really sort of a passion topic for both of us. know. that's, that's AI or at least something tangentially related to AI we're going to get into today. And that's sort of, um, you know, about how AI can be used and should be used quite frankly, by, um, marketing agencies today for dental practices. uh in terms of fulfillment and actually providing the marketing services, you know that we offer that said it's almost Halloween. We're a day out here and uh the the term that keeps coming, you know back to my mind is hocus pocus because I think a lot of the dentist listening maybe on this call or on this podcast rather have been, you know approached by plenty of marketing agencies out there that, you know, in my opinion, over promise and under deliver, but one of the fundamentals that we often see in these, in this outreach from other agencies, and we're not ones to throw others under the bus here, but I think there is a certain amount of skepticism and caution that should be considered when navigating marketing agencies today, because a lot of them are. subscribing to what I would call Hocus Pocus. And they're sort of selling a version of SEO in particular. We're going to focus really on search engine optimization today, but really focusing on a version of that that is almost entirely automated and you know, by AI and maybe not moving the needle as much as is promised or as is expected. And I think that, you know, you and I, Brian, we've talked a lot about this. that there is an absolute need uh and business and objective uh imperative in integrating AI into our marketing agency workflows in order to better serve the client and get them a better bang for their buck. um It's about increasing efficiency at the end of the day and doing more with that marketing investment. But there's also a lot that that you still need to be very careful in applying AI to and that requires human oversight. So I know you and I wanted to have this conversation for a long time. It's really relevant, I think, especially given that it's almost Halloween and we're talking about some of the magic behind the scenes and maybe some of the, ah some of the, yeah, the scary part. So let's get into it. Like, what do you think about all this and, you know. If you don't mind just kind of recapping with listeners today, kind of what we've been talking about as far as applying AI to SEO and other online marketing for dental practices today from an agency perspective. Yeah, absolutely. So hey, like you said, it's almost Halloween and AI is magical, So I'll start out by saying this is a fast moving industry. Six months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago, everybody knows this was totally different. And six to 12 months from now, it will probably have totally changed again. So. AI from an agency standpoint, the way I like to explain it is us and other agencies, it's not going to replace agencies. It's not going to replace your front desk folks or anybody else in your practice. But what will happen is agencies who responsibly use AI and practices who responsibly use AI will be doing more. and uh accomplish more for your business um and frankly leave agencies and dental practices that are not using AI in the dust. Because what AI does is it allows us to do more. It doesn't replace certain folks or whatever, but it allows folks with certain expertise to accomplish things that weren't reasonable before. Yeah, it's an amplifier. It's not a be-all end-all by any means. uh And I think that's one thing that you and I have always uh shared when it comes to our approach to AI. It's that AI requires human oversight. We talk about it when it comes to content development. You and I offline have talked about it when it comes to some of the more technical elements of SEO. uh And in fact, there are AI-powered tools now that essentially uh well, at least they're sold as sort of a turnkey solution for uh optimizing websites, doing a lot of the technical work behind the scenes for you. But what is the danger in that? And well, I guess what is the promise of that and what is also the danger of it? Yeah, so the promise of it is whether it's something that an agency is using or it's something whether or something that like a technically inclined uh practice manager or dentist is using is what these tools promise is you can implement them on your website with a little snippet of JavaScript code. And they will make all of these AI optimizations that will help you outrank everyone else in search. So one of the things that we spend a lot of time doing here is experiments. Experiments are fun, testing out all these new tools. And what we have found as of yet is that they show promise, but in the majority of cases, the output is nowhere close to what a professional SEO practitioner would implement on the site. And like I said earlier, six to 12 months, maybe longer for this type of tool, but AI changes so quickly. Someday, AI will be able to properly do all of these optimizations on your site. And that'll be a great day. because it'll save people time, it'll save people money. But what you will notice when that day comes is that that becomes the new baseline. So AI is no longer a differentiator. AI is, or these AI implemented solutions are the baseline. And you won't be able to rank just because of them. You will still need professional oversight to tweak the things that will allow you to know, level up from that AI baseline, if that makes sense. Yeah, and you know, it's also like I'm always reminded of the hallucination effect with AI. And we talk about that a lot with content development. And, you know, here again, at DentalScapes, we don't allow, you know, AI, you know, solely as the means of content development simply because everything does need human eyes. Everything does need editing. We certainly leverage AI in content development. think agencies would be irresponsible if they didn't simply because it is about maximizing clients return on investment and getting them the most mileage possible uh out of that investment in the agency. And AI, like you said, is an amplifier. It's an extender of the capacity that we already have as human beings. uh But I think about these hallucinations, everyone's probably familiar. I know I certainly am. you know, using chat GPT on a daily basis, using Gemini, using Claude, whatever it might be, you know, every now and then it spits out something that is just completely incomprehensible and or factually completely factually inaccurate. And you think about that and it's funny. And, know, sometimes, you know, you, tilt your head and you're like, well, where the hell did that come from? But think about, you know, and most of the times that's just innocuous. You know, you're, you know, help, you're getting help putting together an outline or something like that. And it doesn't really affect the end product. But what happens when you automate everything with AI when it comes to say technical SEO and, and there's a, you know, in the context of that technical SEO, there's a similar uh error or miscalculation or hallucination or whatever you want to call it. Do you really want to mess with uh that risk when it comes to turning over full control of your website to AI. I don't think we want to make that decision yet. And yet I do think that there's a lot of agencies out there, most of whom are charging uh far less than other agencies out there who are combining AI with human oversight. And I think they're really doing a disservice to their clients because ah there isn't the oversight. There's not the safeguards and there's not the um the monitoring that needs to happen to make sure things are effective. So to that point, I guess I wanted to ask you, I mean, do you have any horror stories from testing these tools or what you've seen happen out there uh with other agencies using these tools in terms of uh some mistake that's made by AI on the backend that can negatively impact a website's performance? Yeah, so uh you do have things that on the technical side, like whether it's content, whether it's title tags, whether it's schema. There are some pretty egregious mistakes I've seen with um some of these AI tools that are out there now. And like I mentioned, that's not going to be forever. ah But especially in health care and health care adjacent industries. There's a thing with Google called YMYL, your money, your life type ah topics and healthcare certainly falls under one of those. uh Where just as a professional, you don't want to provide someone with information that may either mislead them or in a worst case scenario may lead to harm for them. ah So you do see a lot of these ah I'll call them automated SEO solutions for lack of a better term. And I know money is always changing, but generally, if you see something sub $1,000 a month in the SEO world, you should take a close look at it for falling into this category. Yeah. And you know, I think, I think that often happens with, you know, even companies that aren't necessarily familiar with offering human powered SEO in the past. A lot of people are just taking advantage of these tools to get into new markets and, you know, try to tap new opportunities. It's so funny. I was on a phone call unrelated, uh, with uh a different vendor, a vendor doing something completely different than, you know, your traditional SEO or whatever. But of course, with these tools, they've decided that they're now experts and they can offer this service as well. And, you know, I heard them say just kind of offhandedly, and you know, by the way, we offer, you know, all inclusive comprehensive SEO services starting at 150 a month. And I just thought, my God. Okay. And there are people that are, there are people that I'm very concerned are going to be suckered into that through no fault of their own. But you really do have to be cautious today because uh The reality is with AI, anyone can quickly start up a quote unquote marketing agency ah and offer these services without the client really understanding what's happening behind the scenes. Yeah. And obviously the marketing world is a lot different than the dentistry world. And that, you know, to become a dentist, you have to have the schooling, have to, you know, pass, you have to be certified ah to perform dentistry. Whereas in the marketing world, that's not a thing. You know, anybody non-technical with $99 a month can get one of these SEO tools and put out a couple of videos on Facebook ads about, oh, we guarantee 30 patients in the first 30 days or it's free, you know, that type of thing. Yeah, let's do a whole nother episode here sometime about guarantees because that's another red flag. That's another red flag for sure. Yeah, yep. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. That's the thing about AI also that we're talking about now. A lot of other agencies out there, and you and I have made a deliberate decision to uh grow sustainably and really kind of... um focus in on that more like white glove service and sort of the boutique model. uh But a lot of agencies, the reality is they're based on volume. And it's like you said, churn and burn. uh you know, uh sign two new clients for every one that you lose and hopefully you stay ahead of the curve. uh That's another episode. yeah, now the, uh, the way to, would say to practices listening to this, the way to really, um, avoid falling into that kind of trap is to make sure you're tracking your results, you know, keep an eye on what they're putting out and, you know, don't fall victim to some of these really high in the funnel metrics that they'll flash in front of you. Like, Hey, you got a hundred more impressions this month. um Yeah, that's possible, but they might be all from AI crawlers or from different countries or whatever the case may be. You you want to focus on uh qualified form fills and phone calls. And those qualified new patient leads, like that's where the rubber hits the road, right? And from that, you know, there are further metrics from a best practices standpoint. You want to see how many people... show up in the chair, not just book and there are some other metrics. um yeah, you should keep a close eye on results as you're working with your agency. Yeah, absolutely. And to that point, know, the dentist or practice agency relationship, what are some of the things that you would advise, you you and I hear it every day. What are some of the things that you would advise dentist owners to be asking a potential agency about their use of AI, you know, as they go into the sales call, the proposal process, because, you know, I know we hear it all the time. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. What would you advise practice owners keep in mind? That's a great question, Dan. And I think it can be as simple as, can you tell me a little bit about how you're going to use AI to deliver services to us? um Because that will start the conversation. And obviously, if they're cagey about it, if they're not willing to answer, that's a huge red flag. uh The other red flag, and we haven't really talked about this much today. is if they say, we don't use it at all. We're all human written content. We have humans taking, you know, doing everything in our agency. That's a massive red flag because that's someone using outdated practices and quite frankly, setting your money on fire. Yeah, I was going to say one. It's probably not true. And even if it was and even if it was what a massive waste uh because again. Responsible use of AI is really the key here and you know it's also interesting. There's a lot of misconception out there and there are even agencies that I've heard of when I talk with some of these uh dentist owners who are you know in the vetting process and they say well you know this other agency told me that. Google penalizes AI, uh AI-generated content. That's actually not true. Google is on the record. Yeah, mean, Google is on the record as saying AI-generated content is fair game so long as it's quality. I mean, the name of the game is providing value to the end user. And so these tools can and should be used responsibly. And like you said, mean, ah if they're uh solely relying on human writers, uh If they're avoiding AI completely in the content development process, massive red flag like you said, because that practice is just burning money that it doesn't need to. That's correct. Yeah. And I think you touch on an important point there, Dan, and that's that this isn't conjecture. This isn't assumptions that we're making. is Google search liaison. Like Google themselves have said that uh AI content is just as good as human written content. It just needs to uh be quality content, be valuable content. The extension of that discussion, because I've looked at that whole transcript from where it was said, ah is that content can be AI generated, but it pretty much has to be human edited and revised. So you can't just toss AI content out there and hope it'll rank. ah That's a recipe for disaster. Absolutely. So I think, uh you know, I think just some takeaways from this conversation, AI needs to be used responsibly. uh I think it's actually irresponsible not to use AI when it comes to marketing a dental practice. But that said, uh there are certain functions, you know, in SEO in particular, in content development, where uh that human oversight is irreplaceable and absolutely necessary. uh And dentist owners in you know, having the conversation with potential marketing partners out there really do need to start the conversation and be comfortable talking about it because it's, you know, it is, it is, um, you know, one of those strategic decisions that an agency takes in terms of how they're going to apply AI to their work that I think says a lot about their philosophy. And, know, at the end of the day can really impact the results that you get. uh I think this conversation is so valuable and I know we're going to continue it. you said, uh sometimes it feels like every month we wake up to a different world and that's, that's, you know, it's, it's, it's absolutely the case that uh AI powered and influence marketing will be wildly different six months from now, a year from now. And so ah it's, it's really good to check in on this from time to time and just see where everything's at. But I, uh I really have enjoyed this conversation and like, Like I said, there's so many other things that we can get into. uh You know, as it pertains to AI and marketing, it's obviously the shiny object right now in the field. And we've talked a lot, you and I, on this podcast and also on our website about AIO and AI optimization now in addition to traditional SEO. uh It's here. It's real. And you have to adapt or just get smoked. uh And so... uh I'm excited to continue the conversation. Thanks so much for sharing that insight today and we'll be back at it next week. Thanks, Dan. Alright, sounds good. We'll see ya. All right, did I stop it? I don't know.