Smile Team, a multi-practice orthodontics provider in Australia, grew organic search traffic 125% across a 28-month SEO engagement with Aemorph, from 2,506 monthly organic visits in October 2021 to 5,629 by February 2024. That is an annualised 41% a year. For a orthodontics group, organic visits from SEO (search engine optimisation) put every practice in front of the people searching for a dentist nearby, where your leads start.
Smile Team more than doubled its Ahrefs-estimated monthly organic visits across 28 months.
| Measure | Value | What it measures | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic growth | +125% | Ahrefs-estimated monthly organic visits, 2,506 to 5,629 | Oct 2021 to Feb 2024 | Ahrefs organic traffic |
| Engagement length | 28 months | Duration of the SEO engagement | Oct 2021 to Feb 2024 | Aemorph case record |
| Annualised rate | 41% a year | Compound annual growth rate of monthly organic visits | Oct 2021 to Feb 2024 | Ahrefs organic traffic |
Organic search results, not AI citations. Source: Ahrefs, August 2026.
Written by Kevin Dam, founder of Aemorph, who has practised SEO since 2010 and sits on the Forbes Agency Council. Aemorph is a Google Partner. LinkedIn
The Group's Search Position Before the Engagement
When the engagement began in October 2021, Smile Team's individual location pages drew little traffic and had low visibility in search; the starting figure in the table above is the baseline for every later gain.
Why does traffic vary between practices within the same orthodontics group?
Traffic varies between your practices when each location's online record is built and maintained separately and to different standards, so one location carries a more complete, more current record than another. Rankings also depend on other signals.
What Aemorph Did for Smile Team
Aemorph's 28-month SEO engagement with Smile Team, from October 2021 to February 2024, focused on the group's individual location pages, the pages a patient searching for a practice nearby lands on. Every month of the engagement, Aemorph:
- Published two location-specific blog posts, each answering questions local patients ask.
- Built backlinks from relevant local websites and directories.
If your group's individual location pages struggle to rank, this is the steady local work that moved Smile Team's practices.
For a multi-practice orthodontics group, Aemorph's method also covers three foundations, built on a verified record, the single approved set of facts about your business: one record standard for the group (its practice locations, treatments and practitioner credentials), each practice's treatment range built into pages to the same standard across locations, and dental directories, review platforms and citations matched to that record for each location.
What does a consistent record standard mean across a multi-practice orthodontics group?
A consistent record standard means every practice location carries the same depth of verified detail: name, address, treatment list and practitioner credentials. No location then depends on a stronger individual record while another is left with a thinner one.
The Results: Steady, Compounding Growth Across 28 Months
By February 2024, Smile Team's practices drew 5,629 Ahrefs-estimated organic visits a month, the result of a steady, compounding climb across the 28-month engagement.
| Metric | Before | After | Period | Change | Annualised rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic (Ahrefs-estimated visits/month) | 2,506 | 5,629 | Oct 2021 to Feb 2024, 28 months | +125% | 41% a year |
Organic search results, not AI citations. Source: Ahrefs, August 2026. How results are measured
How is the annualised growth figure calculated?
The annualised figure is the end value divided by the start value, raised to the power of twelve divided by the number of months, minus one. For Smile Team's 28 months, it converts the 125% raw increase into 41% a year. Aemorph's engagements run from four months to nearly eight years, so seven of the nine case-study results are annualised this way to compare fairly; the two short-burst results from a low base, EZRA Clinic and HiBye, are not.
What This Result Demonstrates
Smile Team's result shows what two local blog posts a month and local backlinks, kept up for more than two years, do for a orthodontics group's location pages: a moderate annual rate, sustained across 28 months, more than doubles the visits its practices draw from search. The comparison covers two dates, so it does not isolate which part of the work caused the change. Your next step at this stage is GEO (generative engine optimisation): getting a practice cited inside the AI chats when a patient asks for a dentist by location, not only ranked in a Google results page.
Replicate This Result With Local SEO
Aemorph's local SEO service applies one record standard across the sites of your dental or medical group with three or more practices, so every location competes in local search on equal footing. The same record also underpins broader SEO and GEO.
The result above comes from organic SEO. To get the AI chats stating your facts correctly as well, start with the Showstopper Sensor (Sprint 1), Aemorph's 30-day AI answer sprint. It publishes the answers to your showstopper questions, the buyer questions that stop a purchase when AI answers them badly, as the first part of your Brand Codex, your brand fact sheet: the single source of truth for what AI says about you. Sprint 1 comes with an AI accuracy guarantee.
Buy the Showstopper Sensor (Sprint 1) on its own and it carries the Ground Truth Guarantee: if ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity still miss your approved facts 30 days after your answers go live, you get your Showstopper Sensor fee back in full.
To buy Sprint 1 on its own, you start with the free strategic conversation, and Aemorph quotes each engagement after it; starting points are on the pricing page.
Explore the full set of Aemorph case studies, or book a strategic conversation to discuss a similar result for your practice group.