Any ideas for capturing keywords that your client rejects because they aren't politically correct?
-
Here's the scenario: you need to capture a search phrase that is very widely used in common search, but the term is considered antiquated, overly vernacular, insensitive or outright offensive within the client's industry.
In this case, searchers overwhelmingly look for "nursing homes," but the term has too many negative connotations to the client's customers, so they won't use it on-page.
Some obvious thoughts are to build IBLs or write an op-ed/blog series about why the term is offensive. Any other ideas?
-
I remember talking with an SEO copywriter who gave an example of a loan company that wasn't allowed to use "bad credit" as part of their advertising, yet it still drew a lot of keywords. The copywriter would write text like "Have other companies told you that you have bad credit?"
I also like the idea about writing articles. You could do something about the history of the term, or myths associated with that term. Another idea might be any quotes from patients or families that could include "I didn't want to go to a nursing home when I got old, I'm so glad my family found Blue Hair Acres for me instead."
Remember you can try to work your phrase in across two sentences. "So and so has a degree in nursing. Home-like care is a goal" (cheesy, but it shows what I'm talking about).
-
I love EGOL's idea of sharing the search volumes to the client.
Jeremy, I can appreciate the sensitive nature of the conversation. The question here, what is in the client's best interests?
I know a bit about nursing homes myself. There are issues of abuse, neglect and an incredible range with respect to the quality of care offered. If your client offers a great service, wouldn't it be in the best interest of both your client and the world to let as many people know about the service as possible?
You can discuss advertising in magazines, television, referrals, etc. but when it comes down to it our role is SEO. We focus on using white hat techniques to maximize the ability of our clients to compete in search results. There is not any reasonable way I can think of to rank for a term like "nursing home" without using the term.
I would try to educate the client on how search engines work with respect to relevancy. It is the client's choice but if the word is not used on the site, then the site wont be found by users searching for the term and the primary audience will be missed entirely.
-
Just my opinion... I have been to a lot of nursing homes.... I go there a two or three times every week to visit. From what I have seen I don't think that the public is extremely touchy about this term.
But, your client has a specific business image that they are trying to maintain... and it seems that this word is on their agenda.
I would show them search volumes and see what they say.
-
Keep in mind that we're not talking about someone wanting "evaporative air conditioner" instead of "swamp cooler" here.
Consider a word like "retarded," which has a national campaign pushing people to stop using it, and is even considered hate speech by some. Swap out the word with "mentally challenged," and GKT shows less than half the local search volume!
It's a tough sell to convince a client who runs a care facility for the intellectually disabled to say, "Our services for retarded kids are the best in the state."
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be coarse or flippant with that example. That's a high-search term that some would find incredibly offensive.
Organizations that fight the use of certain words see it as more than just inelegant speech, they see real, tangible harm whenever the word is used. Reaction to that particular phrase is unique in that there are some who would vociferously argue against it, and other who would still see little to nothing wrong with it (as reflected in GKT).
-
It's all about educating the client.
The client may not like the term, but if that is what the rest of the world associates with the business your client offers, then you are stuck with it. If you wish to get creative I can think of a few options:
-
as you suggested, write articles on why the business model offered is not a "nursing home" but a "skilled nursing facility", "elder care group" or whatever name is preferred.
-
you could supplement your SEO with SEM by placing ads on "nursing home" which do not use that phrase.
-
you could use creative writing such as "...requires in home nursing...." and use image alt text, image names and other less visible means to get the correct associated for the term. This is certainly not the preferred approach but if you are dealing with a stubborn client your choices may be limited
-
you can walk away from the client. It's your role to offer appropriate SEO advice. If that advice is not followed, there is not much you can do. I would try to work with the client as much as possible, use some of the techniques listed above, etc. but in the end either the client's expectations need to change or no one will be happy with this arrangement.
-
-
I like your idea for an article about the term "nursing home". I'd write a couple of those articles and feature links to them on every page of the site.
If I was selling something and everybody everywhere was asking for it by an overwhelmingly popular name I think that I would adapt to it. Visitors to the site would know that they are in the right place. Using some fancyass name would have visitors wondering if you really offer the service that they need... or if they know you offer those services they might wonder if your prices are too high.
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
-
Difference keyword and co-occurence
Could someone explain me what the difference between a keyword and a co-occurence is ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Why isn't my site being indexed by Google?
Our domain was originally pointing to a Squarespace site that went live in March. In June, the site was rebuilt in WordPress and is currently hosted with WPEngine. Oddly, the site is being indexed by Bing and Yahoo, but is not indexed at all in Google i.e. site:example.com yields nothing. As far as I know, the site has never been indexed by Google, neither before nor after the switch. What gives? A few things to note: I am not "discouraging search engines" in WordPress Robots.txt is fine - I'm not blocking anything that shouldn't be blocked A sitemap has been submitted via Google Webmaster Tools and I have "fetched as Google" and submitted for indexing - No errors I've entered both the www and non-www in WMT and chose a preferred There are several incoming links to the site, some from popular domains The content on the site is pretty standard and crawlable, including several blog posts I have linked up the account to a Google+ page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jtollaMOT0 -
Company name doesn't have keyword: use domains instead?
Good Morning! Now, I'll admit, I may be obsessing a little too much on this, and it may not make that big of an impact in the long run, but with Google being introduced to the world if I were to start a business today I would try and include my keyword into the title of my business. For example Dollar Shave Club, at least they got the word shave in there. My business doesn't have a keyword in our name, is it beneficial to structure our URLs to include a keyword so that all of our URLs include that word? So if I sell organic bananas, but my company is called Evananas, is it worth it to have all domains become a child of Evananas.com/organic_bananas? That way at least we have the keyword "Organic Bananas" in our title? So I could then have things like: evananas.com/organic_bananas/recipes evananas.com/organic_bananas/benefits evananas.com/organic_bananas/taste_really_freeking_good Vs. evananas.com/recipes evananas.com/benefits evananas.com/taste_really_freeking_good I'm not sure it makes a difference. The other problem is I want to keep our URL's as short as possible. I feel like less is always more, but I was always under the impression domain/URL based keywords were rather powerful. What is the best practice in this case? Thanks Guys! Evan(ana)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Can't get page moving!
Hi all. I've been working on a page for months now and can't seem to make any progress. I'm trying to get http://www.alwayshobbies.com/dolls-houses on the first page for term 'dolls houses'. I've done the following: Cleaned up the site's overall backlink profile Built some new links to the page Added 800 words of new copy Reduced the number of keyword instances on the page below 15 Any advice would be much appreciated. I don't think it's down to links as the DA/PA isn't wildly different from its competitors. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
OSE Confusion on 'External' Links
Hello All, I am still very new to this but am starting to get a grasp of things in the SEO world, but there are still a few things that I just don't get yet. For example, I've been trying to find out a great strategy for Link Building, what better way than looking at already existing SEO companies? So I did a quick search on a website (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.springer-marketing.co.uk) and tried to look at all of the External incoming links. So I did a filter of Followed+301, Only External and all subdomains. But about 20 of the links for this site are coming from itself. Now, i'm not an expert, but presumably you can't just give yourself strong links? Is this some kind of trick, how or why would somebody do this? Mind Blows Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Any ideas?
I've been working on http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/ for a while, and we moved on to a SEO-friendly platform in November last year. Rankings have stabilised after dropping heavily on the old platform, but they haven't improved inline with the amount of link building we've done. Does anybody have any ideas for tricks that we could have missed? Any advice would be much apptreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Why is my site's 'Rich Snippets' information not being displayed in SERPs?
We added hRecipe microformats data to our site in April and then migrated to the Schema.org Recipe format in July, but our content is still not being displayed as Rich Snippets in search engine results. Our pages validate okay in the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool. Any idea why they are not being displayed in SERP's? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Techboy0