Keyword Research SEO Tip for Chiropractors and Chiropractic Sites

We set out to discover which of the below phrases should be the primary keyword for a chiropractor website based in Cincinnati, Ohio:

chiropractic Cincinnati
chiropractor Cincinnati
Cincinnati chiropractor
Cincinnati chiropractic

What we found was a shortage of data from the two leading keyword research tools. In this case, the data from Google’s free tool was far better than the data from tools that charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per year.

Results from Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool
chiropractic Cincinnati (low search volume, high competition
chiropractor Cincinnati (medium search volume, low competition)
Cincinnati chiropractor (medium search volume, medium competition)
Cincinnati chiropractic (low search volume, very low competition)

Results from Keyword Discovery by Trellian
According to this keyword research tool, most people put Ohio after Cincinnati. For instance, “Chiropractor Cincinnati Ohio” gets more searches than “Chiropractor Cincinnati”. After several searches, we determined that Trellian has not collected enough data on this geographic area in order to be consistent and somewhat accurate. However, it could not hurt your SEO efforts to include the state several times when referencing your location.

Results from WordTracker Keyword Researcher
WordTracker only has one result, which happened to be “chiropractic office Cincinnati”. After several searches, we determined that WordTracker has not collected enough data on this geographic area in order to be consistent and somewhat accurate.

Keyword research is all about the sample size. You not only need the data, but you need enough of it to reach a conclusion with a reasonable margin of error. As you may remember from statistics 101, if Keyword Discovery and WordTracker have only recorded a few searches for a certain term, their margin of error as a statistical representation of the overall population is not to be trusted. Sure, for major terms like “diet pills” they have plenty of world-wide data. But for geo-targeted, industry-specific terms from a small-to-medium sized US city, the data gene pool is short on test subjects.

Therefore, we recommend using Google’s free tool for this type of keyword research. Google’s sample audience is enormous, and you will have trouble finding any term – no matter how small, how geo-targeted, how specific – that Google does not have data on.

As for our original question, here are the keywords in order of importance, for which you should optimize that chiropractor website:
#1 chiropractor Cincinnati
#2 Cincinnati chiropractor
#3 Cincinnati chiropractic
#4 chiropractic Cincinnati

And for good measure, don’t forget to throw in Ohio and OH each a few times, as well as “office” and “practice”.