Ask a podiatry front desk what callers say first, and you'll hear the same few openings: "I need a foot doctor." "Do you take walk-ins for an ingrown toenail?" "Is there a podiatrist near me who can see me this week?" Patients type the same things into Google. Those searches are easy to predict, and a new account should be built on them first.
Then there are the searches nobody at the front desk would think to write down. "Podiatrist open on sunday near me." "Cracked heel treatment near me." "Ingrown toenail infection removal." Each one is rare. There are a lot of them. And the patients typing them are just as ready to book.
A podiatry account needs a plan for both, and they don't start on the same day.
Seven Ways to Ask for a Podiatrist Near Me. Google Counts Them as One Search.
We pulled keyword ideas for our example market, Los Angeles, by feeding 12 podiatry practices' websites into Keyword Planner (Chapter 5 shows how). Seven different wordings came back with exactly the same number: 14,800 searches a month.
- "podiatrists near me"
- "podiatry doctor near me"
- "podiatry doctors near me"
- "podiatrist doctor near me"
- "podiatrist dr near me"
- "dpm near me"
- "foot doctors close to me"
That isn't a coincidence. Keyword Planner reports a search together with its close variants, so seven wordings with the same meaning share one figure. To Google they're one search, and one exact match keyword can reach all seven.
That's what makes exact match more flexible than its name suggests. Exact match doesn't mean letter for letter. It means the patient wanted the same thing you wrote down. Google lists what that covers: misspellings, singular and plural forms, abbreviations, reordered words, small words like "in" or "for" added or dropped, implied words, synonyms and paraphrases. There's no switch to turn it off.
So a podiatrist doesn't need seven keywords for seven wordings. One exact match keyword, [podiatrist near me], can reach "dpm near me" and "foot doctors close to me" without anyone typing them into the account. You write down the meaning. Google handles the spelling.
Meaning has edges, though. Plain "podiatrist," with nothing after it, also shows 14,800, yet it sits outside that group with a higher top-of-page range: up to $8.34 a click, where the near-me group tops out at $6.25. Treat it as a different search. Someone typing only "podiatrist" may want one nearby, or may just want to know what a podiatrist does. And [podiatrist near me] will never stand in for "ingrown toenail removal." A different foot problem is a different meaning, so it needs its own keyword, in its own ad group.
Day One Runs on the Searches Your Front Desk Already Hears
The first campaign in a new podiatry account holds only the searches you can predict. We call it Isolation, because it isolates the searches where the patient has already said what they want and roughly where they want it. (Isolation and Exploration, which comes later, are BrandRocket's names for the two campaigns. Google doesn't use them.)
Every keyword in Isolation is exact match. Three kinds of search go in:
- The practitioner searches. "Podiatrist near me," "foot doctor near me," "foot and ankle specialist near me" and their close cousins. In our example market these are the biggest high-intent searches by far.
- The ready-to-book wording of each foot problem. "Ingrown toenail removal," "podiatrist ingrown nail," "bunion surgeon," "plantar fasciitis doctor," "podiatrist nail fungus." These are the ad groups Chapter 4 built, one foot problem each, each with its own page.
- Searches for your practice and your doctors by name. Those sit next to Isolation rather than inside it: Chapter 5 gave them a brand campaign and a budget of their own.
In our example market, 108 high-intent podiatry searches drew more than 20 searches a month each, counting each group of wordings once. Together they drew about 62,000 searches a month. That's plenty for a first campaign, and every one of them is a search someone could write on a whiteboard before launch.
Isolation runs on manual bids, set by hand for each ad group. Chapter 7 covers how to set them and why the account doesn't hand bidding to Google yet.
The Other 998 Searches Are Too Small to List and Too Many to Guess
Below those 108 sit the searches that don't fit on a whiteboard. In the same Keyword Planner pull, 998 high-intent podiatry searches drew 20 or fewer searches a month each. Most showed about 10. Together they drew about 9,700 a month.
They're not vague. Most are more specific than the big searches, because the patient has added a detail about their foot, their schedule or themselves:
- Heel: 5 heel searches in the list are big enough to predict. Another 27 are small: "heel specialist near me," "cracked heel treatment near me," "best doctor for heel pain," "heel pain after plantar fasciitis surgery."
- Toenails: 31 toenail searches are big enough to predict, and 104 are small: "ingrown toenail infection removal," "fungal nail treatment near me," "specialist for ingrown toenail near me," "toe nail removal near me."
- Who's asking: 10 mention sports ("sports foot doctor near me"), 6 mention children ("pediatric podiatrist near me"), 5 mention diabetes ("diabetic nail trimming near me").
The clearest pattern is timing. 35 of the small searches ask when a podiatrist can see them: "podiatrist open on saturday near me," "podiatrist open now," "same day podiatry appointment," "walk in podiatry near me," "podiatrist weekend hours." A patient who adds "Saturday" to a search is telling you the day they can come in. If your practice opens on Saturday, that patient is about as ready as a patient gets.
Could you add all 998 to Isolation? You could type them in, but it wouldn't work well. Each draws so few searches that many would be marked "low search volume" in your account and rarely show. You'd spend hours managing keywords that almost never run, and you'd still miss plenty, because no downloaded list catches every wording patients use. The long tail in a real account is wider than any list you can download.
One honest note on the numbers. Counted from the downloaded list, the big searches carry more volume than the small ones. What the list can't show is the searches it never reports. The accounts we manage keep finding new, specific, ready-to-book searches in their search terms reports for as long as they run, and that's where they grow once the predictable searches are covered.
Broad Match Finds Those Searches, but Only After Isolation Brings In About 30 Patient Leads a Month
The tool for the searches you can't list is broad match. A broad match keyword can show your ad on searches related to it, including ones that don't contain its words. Seed it with "podiatrist ingrown nail," and it can reach "ingrown toenail infection removal" or "walk in podiatrist for toenail" without either being in the account.
That reach is also the risk. Broad match without a guardrail will happily spend on "ingrown toenail home remedy" and "podiatrist salary." Google's own help pages say broad match should run with Smart Bidding, the automated bidding that sets a bid for each search from what it knows about the person and the moment. Smart Bidding needs conversions to learn from. A brand-new account doesn't have them.
So the broad match campaign waits. We call it Exploration, and it starts once Isolation is producing steady quality conversions: about 30 a month is what we look for. For most podiatry practices that's the second or third month; bigger, higher-spend accounts get there sooner. Quality conversions means the calls and forms that count as real leads, and, where your system sends them back, the booked patients from Chapter 1.
How Exploration is set up:
- It starts as a copy of Isolation. Same ad groups, same ads, same pages.
- It holds only the 3 to 5 keywords that are already winning in Isolation, the ones producing booked patients at a cost you're happy with, switched to broad match.
- It bids with Maximize Conversions and a target CPA, your target cost per conversion, taken from what Isolation actually paid. Chapter 7 covers where that number comes from.
Which keywords make the cut depends on your practice. For a practice strong in nail care, it might be "podiatrist ingrown nail," "ingrown nail removal near me" and "podiatrist nail fungus." For a practice that does a lot of surgery, "bunion surgeon" might be one. Pick them from Isolation's own results, not from what you'd like to sell more of.
Exploration usually spends its first four to eight weeks learning which podiatry searches turn into patients. Every morning of that first month, someone should scan the search terms report for heel, toenail and "near me" searches that don't belong; Chapter 5 lists what to block.
Once Broad Match Runs, Your Exact Match Keywords Still Get Their Own Searches
Once both campaigns run, a search like "plantar fasciitis doctor" could match either one: the exact match keyword in Isolation or a broad match keyword in Exploration. They don't bid against each other. Google picks one keyword to enter the auction, and it has a rule for this. Type [plantar fasciitis doctor] into Isolation, and a patient who searches those three words, word for word, goes to that keyword. When the words aren't identical, Google picks whichever remaining keyword it judges most relevant, and that can sit in either campaign.
That's what keeps the two campaigns in their lanes. Isolation keeps the exact heel, toenail and "near me" searches you wrote down, on your manual bids and your chosen pages. Exploration picks up everything around them.
The balance moves over time. Once Exploration carries the account, you can pause most of Isolation and let broad match and Smart Bidding do the work. If a search that matters to you slips in position, say "ingrown toenail removal" stops showing near the top, turn that exact match keyword back on in Isolation and win it back by hand.
If you'd rather have someone build the Isolation list and decide when Exploration starts, that's how our Google Ads management team runs every podiatry account.
Next: Bidding by Hand Before Google Bids for You
Before Exploration can chase a cost per patient, someone has to find out what a patient costs, and Isolation's hand-set bids are how. Chapter 7 shows why a "podiatrist" click costs many times a "heel hurts" click, and how to bid by hand until you know what a booked patient costs.
For how to build the keyword list both campaigns start from, see Chapter 5. Every chapter is on the guide home.
