Imagine my surprise when, as I was getting a new ChiroPatients Online client set up yesterday, I found a new chiropractic keyword. Not another word for chiropractic, but a keyword that is a symptom your patients have.
(If you’re not familiar with the term “keyword”, you may want to read a previous post where I covered this called How To Use Internet Keywords In Your Offline Marketing.)
Here’s how it happened…
Ever so often, as we’re setting up a new client, I’ll do some keyword research using Google’s keyword generator tool. With this tool, you type in a keyword like “neck pain” and it will throw out about 700 related words people search for on Google. Plus, it will show you how many searches each keyword gets per month.
As I’m working on a list of symptoms that people would type in Google, I stumbled across an interesting keyword. The keyword list Google’s tool generates for you always includes related keywords.
However, this time a keyword popped up that was not one I had heard of before. I just assumed it was a mistake. Something Google just through in the list because it sounded like another keyword, but wasn’t really related.
But since it gets over 300,000 searches monthly, I thought it would be worth checking it out. I typed into Google’s search engine, and sure enough it’s a related keyword.
I’ve never heard it used before — not in chiropractic school, not in practice, and not by any consulting group. Maybe they teach it now in chiropractic school, but I doubt it.
So I went ahead and put the keyword into my client’s Adwords campaign. When I checked his account this morning, I was shocked to find this keyword triggered my client’s ad 10 times in his area in the last 24 hours!
Since his ad only show for a 20 mile radius around his practice, this is big. Very big because his ad is the only one that shows. No one else knows this keyword exists, therefore they aren’t bidding on it. That means he’s the first and only ad that person sees on the page. And he’s going to pay a very small amount when someone clicks his ad.
For example, a typcial search on Google looks like this. With 3 ads up top, and 8 down the side.
This of course drives bids way up, making it very costly to be in #1. But imagine if you were the only ad showing for a popular keyword. Then you get to be #1 with very little cost. And even more important, you’re the first thing people see on the page and the only ad showing.
In the interest of my clients, I can’t reveal what this keyword is. But I did confirm it’s a new keyword. By using Google’s Trends tool, it showed that the keyword just came into use in 2009. Google Trends will show you how popular a keyword is over time. And you can see if it’s trending up or trending down.
My guess is that MD’s are telling their patients they have this problem, and the patients are going home to search for it online. Here’s a screenshot of the Google Trends research.
The lesson from this is that it pays to do your research. And it definitely pays to know what you’re doing with Adwords so you can be first in the market for new keywords. Without the internet and Google’s keyword tool, I’m not sure chiropractors would even know this word was being used at this level for another 3-5 years.
If you’d like someone to handle your internet marketing for you, check out this free webinar. (We have room for only 2 more clients this month.)
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