Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
-
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page.
To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100.
“Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content.
Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms:
“free rock music”
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music”I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”.
“Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content?
By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too.
To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google!
Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.
-
@JCN-SBWD One way to potentially address this issue is to focus on building a strong backlink profile that reinforces your intended keyword associations. Additionally, you may want to consider adding more content to your product pages to further clarify your intended messaging and minimize the potential for negative keyword associations. Finally, it may be worth exploring alternative search engines or platforms to expand your reach and diversify your traffic sources.
-
@JCN-SBWD cool! (from a SEO perspective) I would speculate that Google considers this related keywords to the keywords optimized for, and thus ranks for it.
Other option would be that you have incoming links with that keyword. I looked and did not see much of that kind.You could take the "copyright" keyword off the page for a while and see if it changes. But that would take some time as Google will consider your page relevant to it for at least a while (Sorry)
-
@JCN-SBWD i hav similar problems...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I hide comment reply's from google? Do I need to?
Reason for asking is Moz reports them as URL too long. Should these even be indexed by google if not, how do I hide them? Example URL : https://www.tansleyphotography.co.uk/farnham-castle-wedding-claire-chris/?reply-to=1876 This really doesn't need indexing, as it's just a comment on a blog post. Does it matter?
On-Page Optimization | | paultansley1 -
I'm looking to put a quite length FAQs tab on product pages on an ecommerce site. Am I likely to have duplicate content issues?
On an ecommerce site we have unique content on the product pages (i.e. descriptions), as well as the usual delivery and returns tabs for customer convenience. From this we haven't had any duplicate content issues or warnings, which seems to be the case industry-wide. However, we're looking to add a more lengthy FAQs tab which is still highly relevant to the customer but contains a lot more text than the other tabs. The product descriptions are also relatively small. Do you think this will cause potential duplicate content issues or should it be treated the same as a delivery tab, for instance?
On-Page Optimization | | creativemay0 -
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings.
I have seen zero movement in my Google keyword rankings, but I have seen movement on the other search engines. I must be doing something wrong. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | LindaWolfe0 -
Table text : Does that influences the website's ranking ?
We are currently working on a new page for one of our clients and there is A LOT of writing, so A LOT of differents pages. If I decide to put the texts on table text instead of creating a link for another page, will that influence the ranking in any way ? I've been a web writer for only a year now and still try to figure out how to optimize the written part. Thank you for your answers.
On-Page Optimization | | marketingmedia.ca0 -
Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag, A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though. Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
On-Page Optimization | | mac22330 -
Reducing the site's header to get more content Above the Fold
The user bizzer posted the following question on the post (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guide-to-ads😞 "I've got my above the fold area very light on advertising since Panda. But reading #4 about the "template" makes me wonder if I should go further and reduce the height of my header area and maybe even remove one of my two sidebars, so as to increase the content-to-template ratio above the fold. Make sense?" What do you think?
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Should H1s be used in the logo? If they are and it is dynamic on each page to relate to the page content, is this detrimental to the site rather than having it in the page content?
On some sites, the H1 is contained within the logo and remains consistent throughout the site (i.e. the company name is in the of the logo). If the h1 in a logo is dynamic for each page (i.e. on the homepage it is company name - homepage) is this better or worse to have it changed out on the logo rather than having it in the page content?
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0