A chiropractor's first keyword list tends to look the same everywhere: "chiropractor near me," "chiropractor [town]," "back pain chiropractor," a few more conditions. It's a good list. Everyone on it has already made up their mind about the kind of help they want, and the only question left is which practice.
The trouble is everyone else. A man who wakes up unable to turn his head doesn't always type "chiropractor." He types "neck pain treatment," or "pinched nerve in neck," or "treatment for pinched nerve in neck." A woman whose leg tingles after a long drive types "sciatica treatment." Many of those people would happily see a chiropractor. They just never said the word.
This chapter is about reaching them without wrecking the account: which searches the first campaign covers, which ones a second campaign goes after, and how to keep that second campaign from spending money on nonsense.
Every Chiropractic Search You Can Predict Fits on One List, and Exact Match Covers That List
Start with what's already built. Besides the small brand campaign from Chapter 2, the account so far has one main campaign, the one Chapters 4 and 5 built and that we nickname Isolation. Its keywords are all exact match, and the practice owner, not Google, decides what each one bids. Its job is to wall off the searches a chiropractor can write down ahead of time, the ones that plainly come from someone shopping for an adjustment.
That list can stay short. Keyword Planner puts "chiropractor near me" at 673,000 US searches a month on its own, and together, the near-me searches and the ones pairing a condition with the word chiropractor make up more than half of the chiropractic search volume we measured. Holding them on exact match lets the account work out what a new patient costs before it spends anywhere riskier.
What exact match can't do is reach searches you never wrote down. And for a chiropractor, that's a lot of searches.
"Sciatica Treatment" Draws 90,500 Searches a Month Without Ever Naming a Chiropractor
When we grouped chiropractic-related searches from Keyword Planner, the ones that pair a condition with treatment or a doctor ("sciatica treatment," "neck pain treatment," "back pain treatment") made up 26.7% of the volume we measured in the US. Searches that pair a condition with the word chiropractor made up 4.1%.
The biggest of the treatment searches, in US monthly volume:
- "sciatica treatment": 90,500
- "tension headache treatment": 74,000
- "herniated disc treatment": 40,500
- "pinched nerve treatment": 33,100
- "neck pain treatment": 27,100
These people are further from a decision than someone typing "chiropractor near me." Chapter 2 showed their bids are lower for exactly that reason. But they're also people with a problem a chiropractor treats, typing it into Google right now, and the specific phrasings run into the thousands. Nobody can list them all by hand.
Broad Match Finds the Back Pain Phrasings No Chiropractor Would Think to List
Broad match is the keyword setting built for that problem. In Google's description, it lets an ad appear on searches that are related to the keyword even when they don't share its exact meaning. Give it "sciatica treatment" and it can reach "sciatic nerve pain relief," "sciatica leg pain relief" and phrasings you'd never guess.
That reach cuts both ways. Broad match can also reach searches from people who will never book: students, researchers, people looking for home remedies. Google's own guidance is to pair it with automated bidding: "It's critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match," because bids for each search "should reflect the unique contextual signals present at auction-time." Smart Bidding uses the conversions from Chapter 1 to decide which of those searches deserve a real bid.
Which is why broad match doesn't go into the first campaign. Smart Bidding needs conversion history to steer by, and a brand-new account doesn't have any.
Broad Match Builds Out From the Keywords It Starts With, So Weak Keywords Bring Back Weak Searches
Campaign number two gets our other name, Exploration. Build it by duplicating Isolation and changing three things:
- Only the proven keywords. Keep just the three to five keywords whose clicks turned into patients who walked in for a first visit. Broad match reaches outward from whatever it's given, so starting it from the searches that already book points it toward more like them.
- Broad match instead of exact. Those few keywords switch to broad match.
- Bidding toward a cost per patient. Exploration runs on Google's Maximize Conversions bidding with a target cost per acquisition set. Google is renaming that setting "Target CPA," so you may see either label. Set the target from the real cost per new patient your Isolation campaign has been producing.
Google's guidance lines up: its suggested target is simply what a conversion has cost on average over the past month. Google adds that an optimistic target can backfire, leaving good clicks unbought and patients unbooked. Plug in the cost per patient Isolation actually achieved.
Until the Ads Bring In 30 Quality Leads a Month, Broad Match Buys Guesses, Not Patients
So when is a chiropractic account ready? Count, don't guess. Exploration waits until the ads are producing roughly 30 genuine conversions a month: phone calls long enough to count, sent forms, bookings, and kept first visits as they start flowing back from Chapter 1's tracking.
For most chiropractic accounts, that happens around two or three months in. A practice spending more, or one in a bigger market, can get there sooner. A practice in a small town on a small budget may take longer, and that's fine. Starting broad match early, before there's enough data, hands Google a wide range of searches and almost nothing to judge them by.
Google uses a similar yardstick for its own bidding: it suggests judging target CPA results on a month of data with no fewer than 30 conversions in it.
Broad Match Mistakes Show Up in the Search Terms Report Before They Show Up in the Budget
Once Exploration is live, the search terms report is the page to open first every morning. It shows the words people really typed before your ad appeared. With exact match, that list holds few surprises. With broad match, it's where you find out what Google decided was "related."
For the first 30 days, read it every day. For each search, make one of three calls:
- Keep it. A good patient search ("sciatica relief near me") stays and teaches the bidding.
- Exclude it. Anything that isn't a patient goes on the negative list: career searches, home-exercise and stretch videos, equipment for sale, other professions.
- Promote it. If "sciatica relief near me" or some other new phrasing keeps turning into kept first visits, give it a permanent home in Isolation as an exact keyword with a bid you set.
Once the first month is behind you, checking weekly usually keeps up, though new junk searches never fully stop arriving. The career and rival-name negatives from Chapter 5 are the starting point, not the whole list.
Google Picks Exact Match Over Broad When a Chiropractic Search Matches the Keyword Word for Word
With both campaigns live, which ad shows when a search could fit either one? Google's matching page settles it: if the search is word for word the same as an eligible exact match keyword, that exact match keyword takes priority over broad and phrase keywords and over Performance Max.
That's why Isolation keeps running after Exploration starts. Your known booking searches stay under exact match, with bids you control, and Exploration works on everything else. The split between the two campaigns changes as the account matures. If Exploration ends up producing most of the patients, parts of Isolation can be paused, and a paused exact keyword can come back whenever the practice wants to fight harder for that one search. Watch the cost per patient in each campaign and let the numbers decide.
How do you know Exploration is working? Give it a few weeks, then compare it with Isolation on the number that matters: cost per kept first visit. If Exploration's cost per patient lands near the target and the patients are real, it's doing its job, finding people Isolation never would have reached. If its cost runs far above the target month after month, or its conversions are mostly short calls and forms that never turn into visits, tighten it: trim the keywords back to the very best one or two, add negatives harder, and give it another month before deciding.
There's one more thing to watch for a chiropractor: the type of patient Exploration brings in. Broad condition searches can pull in people looking for a different kind of provider, such as physical therapy, pain management or a surgeon. Some of them are fine patients for a chiropractor. Others called the wrong office. The front desk often hears which is which before the reports show it, so ask them.
If you'd like someone to run the search terms review for you while Exploration settles in, our Google Ads agency team does it daily for new accounts.
Next: A Typical Metro Gets a Few Thousand "Chiropractor Near Me" Searches a Month
In any one town, the searches that book are scarce, which makes every auction for them worth winning. Chapter 7 tackles the money side of those auctions for a chiropractor: setting Isolation's bids by hand, reading impression share to see how often you're on top, and deciding when Google should take the wheel. Earlier chapters, from keyword research back to tracking, are on the Google Ads for Chiropractors guide home.
