Question: What do you do about negative keywords? Do you just want to avoid using them on your pages, or is there a way to proactively “block” searchers using them?
Answer: Negative keywords are used primarily in the PPC / AdWords arena, and are not a big issue in terms of SEO. A medical malpractice attorney, for example, might identify the negative keyword ‘insurance’ in the search ‘Medical Malpractice Insurance.’ This indicates a doctor trying to buy Medical Malpractice insurance, certainly not a prospect for a medical malpractice attorney!
In terms of SEO, it doesn’t really matter if a person lands on the page by this sort of search. But, if you proceed to do AdWords / PPC – Google Advertising, you ‘pay per click’ and in that sense the negative keywords are very important. You exclude them in the AdWords interface, and thereby avoid having to pay for useless clicks.
Even if you are not advertising now, you might in the future. So I recommend to my students that you identify your negative keywords in your keyword worksheet. That way, you have done some of this hard thinking now as you lay out your keywords strategy.
Got a question? Click this link to email Jason or call 888-993-1122. Dr. Jason McDonald is founder and Senior SEO / Social Media Director of the JM Internet Group. He teaches the SEO training classes for the group, and therefore provides most of the SEO tips for this blog. His goal with this blog is to provide an easy 'one-stop shop' for the busy marketer looking for tips, tricks, and secrets on how to get to the top of Google and Bing for free using proven SEO tactics. When not dreaming up SEO tips, Dr. McDonald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two dogs, a cat, four iguanas and twelve children (just kidding). Really you read down to the bio on this guy? Enjoy the blog.
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