You can help your SEO by avoiding the use of certain terms. I've found that it's hard for some people to understand certain words can actually harm a page’s rank, turn away potential visitors and do nothing to help your SEO.. But in fact they can. Whether the terms are unrelated to content on the site, contain profanity, explicit, or adult themed terms, or are generally improper in nature, this post explores some terms to avoid when your hoping for either higher search rankings or more site visitors.
Terms Unrelated To Site Content Don't Help Your SEO
First, avoid “stuffing” terms that have little to do with your site’s content. For example, a tax attorney has a blog and wants to attract potential clients with an affinity for expensive cars. While this makes sense if the blog post is talking about the tax implications of owning expensive cars, it does not make sense if the post is simply talking about auto parts, racing, or car models and features. This type of content is less likely to cause much of a boost for the site in either search rankings or visitors.
Why? Search engines use a complicated algorithm to rank websites and individual pages. Among other things, these algorithms take into account the other content on a site when ranking individual pages to determine the overall relevance of the site and the page for a particular search query. Thus, if you are searching for a site about auto parts and you are directed to a tax attorney’s website, you will likely be annoyed. The site is completely irrelevant to the searchers needs with only a single page of the site relating to their query.
Profanity And SEO
It goes without saying that a professional should avoid writing with profanity under any circumstances simply because of the impression makes on potential customers. But, from an SEO standpoint, this is even truer. Modern search engines often filter out content some might find offensive for themselves or inappropriate for younger visitors. These filters can keep your page from ranking in many search results, even if the rest of the content is relevant, simply because of the use of profanity. Placeholder terms or symbols can be substituted with no penalty, such as using the first and last letters of the word with dashes (-) in between, or even using the old cartoon symbol-swearing trope (@#$%^&!). While your page will not rank for the profane terms, even for those who switch off their search engine's filters, it is rare that anyone is going to search for a professional while including a swear word in the query, and even rarer still that such a person is honestly trying to retain that firm's services.
Explicit Or Adult Themed Terms Or Content And SEO
While many believe that “S- sells” (see how we used the placeholder with the dashes?), the reality is that these terms can actually impair a page's search rankings. Once again, filters will often catch these terms and keep the pages on which they appear from showing up in search results. Unless the query is for adult related content, search algorithms rank the page lower in order to provide the most relevant content. Thus, trying to spice up a blog post by using explicit terms is likely to cause search engines to rank that post more for its adult themes than for its other content, making it show up quite low on adult related searches and probably even lower on searches for your type of professional services.
Bottom line: Think before you post. Use words that truly reflect who you are, what your business does and how you want to be viewed by others. And remember, you only have one chance to make a first impression. When I visit your site for the first time, do you want me to focus on what you do and how you can help me, or on the disgusting words you use in your writing?
