Evolve, LLC — Free Visibility Audit
Aspen Dental — Albany, NY
Here’s where Aspen Dental stands in the Albany market for general dentistry. Every number below is pulled from live data — Google Maps, geographic ranking scans, citation directories, and live AI-readiness probes.
Agency Audit Overview — Free Visibility Audit
|
Core Visibility 41% Needs Attention |
AI Visibility (AISO) 33% Critical Status |
|
Strategic Readiness 36% Needs Attention |
Technical Maturity 52% Needs Attention |
|
Gaps Found 9 |
Critical Priority 5 |
Overall · Needs Attention 40% 0.35·41 + 0.25·33 + 0.20·36 + 0.20·52 = 40% |
Aspen Dental Albany scores 40% overall — “Needs Attention” across every axis. The sharpest divergence is between Core Visibility (41%) and AI Visibility (33%, Critical Status). Your 794 reviews are the highest volume in Albany, but a 4.0-star rating — the lowest among your top 5 competitors — and zero structured data on the website keep the Albany location pinned to an average map position of 10.1. No #1 rankings anywhere. AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini have no schema to read and no named dentist credentials to cite. The technical stack (52%) is the strongest axis because the corporate site’s conversion flow is well-built — but mobile performance at 35/100 is dragging it down hard.
VERIFY WITH CLIENT
No local phone number was submitted with this audit. Does the Albany location use a dedicated local number (518 area code) or only the national 800-277-3633 line? A local phone number is a strong local-ranking signal and should appear consistently on the GBP, website location page, and all citation directories.
Score Breakdown — Core Visibility
| Dimension | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Google Maps Presence | 5/10 | 4.0 rating with 794 reviews and a claimed profile — strong volume, but 4.0 falls below the 4.3 threshold where Google rewards map prominence. |
| Website Organic Ranking | 2/10 | 0% of 95 scanned pins show Aspen Dental in the top 3. 46% appear in the top 10, but the average position of 10.1 means Google is burying you on page 2 of Maps. |
| Review Authority | 5/10 | 794 reviews is the highest count in Albany — but 4.0 rating trails Albany Dental Team (4.8, 266 reviews) and Dr.K Dental Albany (4.7, 399 reviews) significantly. |
| Content & GEO Readiness | 3/10 | Zero structured data detected on aspendental.com — no Dentist schema, no LocalBusiness, no Service, no FAQPage. The corporate site serves 1,100+ locations with no Albany-specific content. |
| Competitive Position | 1/10 | Aspen Dental holds #1 on 0% of 95 scanned pins. Albany Dental Team holds #1 on 0% and Albany Dental Care on 32% — they own the top spot on two-thirds of the grid. |
| Review Velocity | 9/10 | 794 reviews vs. the top competitor’s 266 — Aspen Dental has 3x the review volume of any Albany competitor. This is a genuine asset. |
| Topical Authority Coverage | 4/10 | Corporate site has extensive service pages (dentures, implants, aligners, emergency, cosmetic) but none target “Albany” or the Capital Region — zero locally-specific content to build topical authority. |
| TOTAL | 29/70 | 41% — Needs Attention |
Where You Rank Across Albany
A live 11×11 grid scan of Google Maps ranking around your business. Green = top 3. Yellow = top 10. Red = not ranking.
Open full interactive heatmap →
Ranking Breakdown — 95 pins scanned
53% rank #11–20
1% not ranking
The most striking finding: Aspen Dental appears on 99% of the 95 scanned pins in the Albany area — Google knows this location exists — but it never cracks the top 3 on any of them. The average position is 10.1, which means Google consistently places this location on the boundary between page 1 and page 2 of Maps results. With 46% of pins in positions 4–10 and 53% in positions 11–20, the Albany location sits in no-man’s-land: present, but never prominent enough to capture the click. The two practices dominating this grid tell a clear story. Albany Dental Team (4.8 stars, 266 reviews) holds #1 on 35% of pins. Albany Dental Care, P.C. (4.8 stars, 257 reviews) holds #1 on 32%. Between them, they own the top position on two-thirds of the entire scan area. The pattern is consistent: local independent practices with higher ratings but far fewer reviews are winning — because Google values rating quality over review volume in local pack rankings.
3 Critical Gaps Holding You Back
1. You Never Rank #1 on Any Google Maps Pin in Albany
Across 95 scanned pins covering the Albany metro area, Aspen Dental holds the #1 position on exactly 0% of them. Albany Dental Team owns #1 on 35% of the grid and Albany Dental Care owns 32%. Combined, these two independent practices hold the top spot on 67% of the scan area — meaning for two out of every three locations a patient searches from, they see a competitor first, not Aspen Dental. The 4.0 rating is the primary drag: Google’s local algorithm heavily weights rating in the ranking formula, and 4.0 is 0.7–0.8 stars below every dominant competitor in this market.
Business impact: Patients searching “dentist near me” from most Albany ZIP codes will see 7–14 other practices before Aspen Dental. At an average position of 10.1, you are functionally invisible on the first screen of Maps results — the screen where 70–80% of appointment calls originate.
2. Zero Structured Data on Your Entire Website
The schema audit detected zero JSON-LD blocks on aspendental.com — no Dentist schema, no LocalBusiness, no Service, no FAQPage, no Organization, no AggregateRating, no Person. For context, competitor Albany Dental Care has Organization, BreadcrumbList, WebPage, and WebSite schema already in place. In a market where Google is increasingly using structured data to populate AI Overviews and rich results for healthcare queries, zero schema means zero machine-readable identity.
Business impact: Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Gemini pull dental practice information from structured data. Without it, Aspen Dental Albany cannot appear in AI-generated recommendations — the channel that is rapidly growing for “dentist near me” discovery.
3. 4.0-Star Rating Is the Lowest in Your Competitive Set
Aspen Dental Albany’s 4.0 rating is lower than every competitor on the heatmap grid: Albany Dental Team (4.8), Albany Dental Care (4.8), Dr.K Dental Albany (4.7), and even Albany Dentist (4.5 with only 15 reviews). In the broader local finder for “dentist Albany,” practices like Dental Wellness of Albany (4.9, 597 reviews), The Smile Zone (4.9, 1,300 reviews), and Colvin Avenue Dental (4.9, 195 reviews) dominate. With 794 reviews, Aspen Dental has the highest volume in the market — but the sheer count isn’t overcoming the rating gap.
Business impact: For dental patients, star rating is the single most visible trust signal after insurance acceptance. A 4.0 rating in a market where 8 of the top 10 competitors are at 4.4 or above means prospective patients filter you out before they ever click to your profile.
Your Top 2 AI Visibility Gaps
ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are becoming discovery tools for local dental services. Here’s where Aspen Dental Albany is invisible to them right now.
Pillar 1 — Structured Data & Schema
0 / 7 — Critical Status
The schema audit found zero JSON-LD blocks on aspendental.com — no Dentist, no LocalBusiness, no Service, no FAQPage, no Organization, no AggregateRating, and no Person schema. The site has no machine-readable entity identity whatsoever.
Business impact: When a patient asks ChatGPT “who’s the best dentist in Albany, NY?”, the AI has no structured data to read from your site — it cannot identify your practice as a dental entity, cannot surface your services, and cannot cite your ratings.
Pillar 3 — E-E-A-T Signals (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust)
3 / 7 — Needs Attention
The site has an About page and 10 credential-related keywords detected, but no named dentists appear on the homepage or in any structured format. No individual provider bios with DDS/DMD designations, dental school credentials, or board memberships are visible. The site uses generic “industry-leading doctors” language without naming who those doctors are.
Business impact: Without named dentists, credentials (DDS/DMD, dental school, board memberships, state license), and visible expertise markers, LLMs won’t cite your practice when prospects ask “who’s the best dentist in Albany?” — they cite competitors who proved expertise visibly.
Want the full 6-pillar AI Visibility breakdown? See what Medium and Full audits include →
Strategic Readiness — 36% (Needs Attention)
Strategic Readiness measures whether your digital presence covers the searches that matter, builds topical depth, uses clean URL architecture, performs well for users, and has the local strategy signals Google reads for map rankings. Aspen Dental’s biggest strategic weakness is the total absence of Albany-specific content — the corporate site at aspendental.com serves 1,100+ locations with shared national pages, which means this Albany location has zero locally-targeted search intent coverage. The URL structure is clean at the corporate level (logical /dentist/ny/albany/ hierarchy), but mobile performance at 35/100 is the second drag — a Largest Contentful Paint of 6.9 seconds actively pushes users to competitors before the page finishes loading.
BIGGEST STRATEGIC GAP
Zero locally-targeted content for Albany — the corporate site’s national service pages don’t rank for “dentist Albany” queries. A dedicated Albany landing experience with local dentist bios, Albany-specific reviews, and neighborhood content is the single highest-leverage strategic move.
Medium + Full audits dig into the 5 Strategic dimensions individually.
Technical Maturity — 52% (Needs Attention)
Technical Maturity measures the website’s performance, on-page SEO health, content architecture, conversion paths, and positioning clarity. The Aspen Dental corporate site scores well on conversion design (scheduling is prominent, financing is visible, insurance information is accessible) and has a logical content architecture with dedicated service pages. But mobile Lighthouse performance at 35/100 is critically poor — the Largest Contentful Paint takes 6.9 seconds (target: under 2.5 seconds), and Total Blocking Time is 1,760ms. Desktop is marginally better at 51/100. On-page SEO scores 92/100 (strong fundamentals), but the complete absence of structured data drops the technical floor.
BIGGEST TECHNICAL GAP
Mobile performance at 35/100 is actively hurting rankings — Google uses mobile-first indexing, and a 6.9-second LCP means many patients on phones will abandon before the page loads. This is a corporate-level fix (performance optimization of the Next.js application) but has direct local impact.
Medium + Full audits expand into Lighthouse mobile + desktop, page-level on-page audit + content architecture + brand positioning.
Competitive Snapshot
| Business | Rating | Reviews | Avg Map Rank | #1 Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aspen Dental ⬅ | 4.0 | 794 | 10.1 | 0 |
| Albany Dental Team | 4.8 | 266 | — | 33 |
| Albany Dental Care, P.C. | 4.8 | 257 | — | 30 |
| Dr.K Dental Albany | 4.7 | 399 | — | 10 |
The competitive picture is clear: independent local practices with 4.7–4.8 star ratings and one-quarter to one-half the review volume are outranking Aspen Dental’s Albany location at every pin on the grid. Albany Dental Care has dedicated dentist bio pages with named providers (Dr. Guadagno, Dr. Feigenbaum DDS, Dr. Rosenbach DMD MS) and individual service sub-pages — the kind of locally-focused content architecture that Google rewards for local pack rankings. In the organic SERP for “dentist Albany,” Aspen Dental doesn’t appear in the top 12 results at all — Albany Dental Team, Rose Dental Associates, Albany Med, and Albany Upstate Dental own page 1.
Citation Breakdown
| Directories scanned | 20 |
| Listings found | 9 of 20 |
| Fully correct NAP | 0 of 9 |
Important context for a national chain: The citation scan shows 0 of 9 found listings with fully matching NAP — but most of the “name incorrect” flags are false positives. The Google Business Profile lists this location as “Aspen Dental – Albany, NY” (standard Google multi-location format), while directories like Yelp, Hotfrog, and Tupalo correctly list just “Aspen Dental” (the real brand name). The scanner flagged these as mismatches because the directory names don’t match the full GBP name with the geographic suffix — but the directories are right.
The real citation problem is the 11 directories where Aspen Dental Albany has no listing at all: Bing, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, Apple Maps (not scanned), Manta, CitySearch, Chamber of Commerce, EZLocal, TomTom, Zillow, and eLocal. Missing from Bing and Foursquare is particularly costly — both feed navigation systems and local search engines that Google cross-references for entity validation.
Dental Authority Directory Presence
Generic citation directories (the ones in the section above) matter for Google Maps trust. Dental-specific authority directories matter for how Google ranks dental practices in healthcare SERPs and how AI Overviews pick which practices to cite. We checked each of the directories that feed those rankings:
Verification Summary — 2 of 4 dental directories list your practice
| Directory | Status | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Zocdoc | NOT FOUND | Booking-platform first-stop in most metros; profile + booking widget directly drive appointment volume |
| ADA Find-a-Dentist | UNCERTAIN | American Dental Association authority directory; consumer-trust signal Google reads for dental SERPs |
| Healthgrades | PRESENT | Highest-traffic medical/dental review aggregator; ratings shown directly in Google healthcare SERPs |
| 1-800-DENTIST | PRESENT | National referral aggregator ranking for “dentist near me” intent in nearly every metro |
Aspen Dental Albany is listed on Healthgrades and 1-800-DENTIST — two important dental discovery platforms. But the Zocdoc gap is significant: Zocdoc captures the new-patient booking moment directly, and many Albany-area patients start their dentist search there. The ADA Find-a-Dentist result was inconclusive — individual dentists at this location may be listed under their personal names rather than the Aspen Dental brand. In a market where Google’s AI Overviews for dental queries increasingly pull from these authority directories, missing from Zocdoc means losing every appointment that starts on that platform.
Accessibility & ADA Readiness
96/100 mobile · 100/100 desktop — your site already passes most automated accessibility checks — strong foundation.
A Medium audit ($49) runs the full WCAG-aligned audit and names the top 3 specific fixes. One item flagged: 4 touch targets lack sufficient size or spacing. ADA accessibility lawsuits against local businesses are rising every year — maintaining this strong score protects against that risk.
3 Quick Wins — This Week
1. Create a Zocdoc Profile for the Albany Location
We searched Zocdoc for Aspen Dental in Albany and found no profile. Zocdoc is the booking platform Google references in healthcare AI Overviews for dental queries — and it’s free to create a profile. Set it up this week with the Albany address (979 Central Ave Suite 400), office hours, accepted insurance carriers, and the lead dentist’s name and credentials. This captures every new-patient appointment that starts on Zocdoc — appointments that are currently going to whichever Albany competitor does have a profile.
2. Launch a Rating Recovery Campaign — Target 4.3+ Within 90 Days
Your 4.0-star rating is the single biggest drag on map rankings. With 794 reviews, you need approximately 60–80 new 5-star reviews to move the needle to 4.1, and about 200 to reach 4.3. Start this week: implement a templated post-appointment text message (within 2 hours of checkout) asking satisfied patients to leave a Google review. Respond to the 10 most recent negative reviews within 48 hours — Google weights response rate, and a thoughtful response can prompt the reviewer to update their rating. Your review volume proves patients come through the door; the issue is converting positive experiences into visible ratings.
3. Verify Your Facebook Business Page Matches Your GBP
Our directory scan flagged a possible mismatch on your Facebook Business Page — the name, address, and phone may not match the Google Business Profile. Facebook’s scraping data is noisy, so verify before changing anything: log into Facebook → Edit Page Info and confirm the name reads “Aspen Dental,” the address is “979 Central Ave Suite 400, Albany, NY 12205,” and the phone number and website URL match the GBP exactly. NAP inconsistencies between Facebook and Google erode local ranking trust — and Facebook is one of the cross-reference directories Google reads most frequently.
What a Full Audit Reveals
This free snapshot covers the visible signals. A deeper audit goes further — starting with the full 6-pillar AI Visibility (AISO) breakdown, which scores your site across Structured Data, Content Structure, E-E-A-T Signals, AI Crawler Permissions, Content Freshness, and Conversational Optimization (Medium shows the complete scorecard; Full adds a 5-competitor AISO benchmark table comparing you head-to-head against Albany Dental Team, Albany Dental Care, and Dr.K Dental). Beyond AISO: keyword gap analysis showing which search terms your competitors rank for that you don’t, on-page technical SEO audit with specific title tag and meta description rewrites, schema markup audit with implementation priorities, WCAG accessibility audit with a prioritized fix list, a 90-day strategic roadmap with phase-grouped actions and quantified impact estimates, and a content calendar mapped to search intent for the Albany dental market.
Want to Turn These Gaps Into Growth?
This snapshot only scratches the surface. Book a free strategy call with Jim at Evolve — we’ll walk through your numbers, answer your questions, and map out exactly what it takes to start winning in the Albany dental market.
Book Your Free Strategy Call →
No pressure. No pitch deck. Just a straight conversation about where you stand and what’s possible.
Analysis prepared using live Google Maps data, geographic ranking scans, citation directory audits, SERP positioning data, Lighthouse performance testing, AI-readiness signal probes, and competitive research. Generated June 2026.