Negative Keywords for SEO

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a client that has a totally legit retail business and they are getting lots of traffic organically that is adult in nature and totally off subject. The reason for this is their domain name contains keywords which while work well for their brand, when reordered and couple with a another keyword (such as picture or image) they get traffic for searches that have nothing to do with them and are pretty awful in nature.

If this was Adwords I'd add a negative in of course but how can I stop bad traffic coming to the site organically?

Any ideas?

Cheers

B

[LoganRay]

Hi,

Have you tried qualifying clicks through meta description and title tag copy? I've had pretty good success using this tactic for local businesses to deter clicks outside of their service area - because a similar problems exists where you can't add negative geographies for where organic results will show.

[Bush_JSM]

Thanks Logan,

The meta data is very clear on what the site is about (both title and description). The issue is it's showing up in the SERPs and users are just clicking without reading anything.

[LoganRay]

That's the only method I know of deter unqualified clicks, interested to see if anyone else chimes in with some useful nuggets of info on this topic!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Short of changing the name of the business and domain, this is unfortunately the way it goes and may have to stay what it is. You can't change word associations or negative connotations of what people use words for.

I would echo Logan's comments of qualifying traffic through titles and meta descriptions. But what I would also do is make sure that your content marketing, site structure / URLs, business listings, etc., are all very explicit in the relevant and related topics that your client is trying to rank for. I would also take a look at competitors to see what keywords they are ranking for and where they are getting backlinks from so that search engines over time will see your client is specific to an industry or topic that is NOT adult natured.

Does this make sense? What I am getting at is making sure you are more and more explicit to search engines that your client's site is related to an industry / topic that is not adult natured.

Let me know if this makes sense or if you have any more questions! Good luck!
Patrick

[EGOL]

Every site has these types of visitors.   I am sure that many of them are nice people. 

What's the difference between these types of visitors and paying for a billboard along a highway where you advertise to random people passing buy?

Your website will be relevant for some of these visitors and if you get enough of them guaranteed that you will get some sales.

I don't think that the Pope would mind if these visitors were dropping into his site.  He still gets to show them his message.  

[Bush_JSM]

Thanks Patrick - yes I think the meta data is the answer - I won't mention the search term they rank for here but it's bad - they rank for some great stuff too though - many thanks

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Egol,

Thanks for your input. The term is actually quite bad as in not your main stream type of adult content so I'm not sure how nice the people are but I get you drift

Thanks for your help and input!

b