Medical Marijuana Keywords
-
Has anyone seen any evidence of Google penalizing for Medical Marijuana related keywords in states where that is legal?
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi,
Just did a quick check on a few marijuana related keywords in Semrush. Don't know if they are really penalising the keywords, top results always seem to be a mix of (governmental) information, and sites where pro/contra are discussed:
- wikipedia
- http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/
- http://www.drugpolicy.org/medical-marijuana - http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-medical-marijuana-laws.aspx
- http://norml.org/legal/medical-marijuana-2
- http://www.azdhs.gov/medicalmarijuana/
I guess that unless the queries are very specific (like: buy medical marijuana online) it will be very difficult to get high positions in the SERP's.
I would assume that the risk of having this content on your site is pretty low, especially if your content is balanced (pro/contra). We manage the biggest health site in the Netherlands (where recreational use of marijuana is allowed since quite some time). While marijuana is not really our top keyword, we do have like 120 articles/news items published and it does not seem to do any harm (as our organic traffic continues to grow).
Hope this helps,
Dirk
- wikipedia
-
Thanks for responding Ryan.
Google seems pretty vague on this and this is just a part of one of our client's business so we don't want to optimize in a way that could get his whole site penalized or discredited.
-
There's not much on this in sourced material other than some mentions in places like: http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/familysafety/advice/#behaviors, "Set age-appropriate filters on your computers and your child’s mobile devices: Filters and other internet safety tools block categories of inappropriate websites a child can view, such as sites containing pornography, violence, gambling, and illegal drug information." Google's SafeSearch is primarily focused on pornography. And the filters mentioned in the link above are in reference to installs on local machines.
Is there some filter going on though? Try typing, 'california medical marijuana' into the search bar and notice where suggested search ends... Obviously at this moment in time there's a legal gray area for this topic as a few states have made medical and recreational use legal, while federally it is still illegal in the US. And right now, search tends to mirror that grayness as well.
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 to do effective keyword research with categories and subcategories?
Hi all, I'm trying to breakdown some SEO 101 tips and start from scratch. Starting with Keywords! I would like to audit our site for main keywords, grouping them in categories and subcategories. My questions are: 1. Is it possible to see where we rank on google AND search trends of visits to our site?
Algorithm Updates | | Eric_S
2. What is a good method or structure to document (excel?)
3. What analysis can be made from finding the results of these keywords and how can I make use of this? As a beginner your help is much appreciated!!2 -
Keyword ranking fluctuations
Hi For last month my website was ranking to 5 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company). But recently (28-nov) it's out of 100, some time it's showing on 25 position but not showing in top 5 position. Here is my url (for analysis): https://magnetoitsolutions.com/services/magento-development/ Please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings. Note: There are some other keywords of different pages start getting ranking drop. please let me know is there anything i need to change. Thank
Algorithm Updates | | harrysamson0 -
How to determine the best keyword strategy/purpose for a blog in 2014?
Currently our blog has been used to add content to our site targeting desired keywords (fairly top-level). For example, if we wanted organic traffic for "Some City Contractors" (by no means a longtail), we would write a blog using this key term in the Title, url, a sub heading perhaps and a couple variations of the term throughout any subheadings or body copy. I think the idea was that since there was so much work to be done to get the static site pages optimized (rewriting that copy), we just decided to crank out fresh content targeting these high level KWs, assuming a search engine result is a result and as long as we got real estate there, a click and there was a link to the relevant site page in that article, we were golden (well, maybe not golden, but good). We are now building a new, responsive site and taking care to make sure that the site's relevant pages are nicely optimized. Higher level page are optimized for high-level KWs and sub pages target longer tail KWs identified in KW research. Along the way an SEO said it was bad that so many of our blogs were better optimized for key terms than the actual site pages (i.e. service pages, things you would find in the main nav.) This does make some sense to me so... So what is the new purpose for our blogs in this new age of Google and ever-increasing social influence? Should we forget about focusing on KWs already addressed within the site's core? Focus more on interesting, super long-tails that maybe don't have a ton of traffic, but are relevant (and oh by they way, something like 3 million terms are searched for the first time each day, right?)? Or forget the keywords, as long as the topic is relevant and interesting the real pay-off is in social interactions. I'm really interested to see if this results in clear-cut answer or more of a lengthy discussion...
Algorithm Updates | | vernonmack1 -
Keyword rich domains
Can you share your experience about Keyword rich domains; do they still hold same value as before?
Algorithm Updates | | ShashankGupta0 -
Can Ecommerce help with Keyword Rankings?
I am curious to know if an ecommerce website plays a role in higher rankings. we have been struggling for some time on a term and all of our competitors have an online shopping cart. we have a custom magento website with a request a quote form as our products are very costly. (range from $500 - $250,000). Is there something we can add to the code to help boost our rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | hfranz0 -
Top resulting sites sites for a specific keyword
I'm teaching myself SEO so that I can speak more intelligently to it with my clients. I've spent a great deal of time on seomoz and love it. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know and that brings me to my current question. I can search on a keyword and see results, however I see every URL available. I'm looking for a simple way to see the root domains for the top 100-500 resulting websites for a specific keyword. Is there an easy way to get this information I'm sure it's right in front of me, but I can't find it. Many thanks, ahossom
Algorithm Updates | | ahossom0 -
Sharp Drop in SERP Ranking for Specific Keyword
I'm sure this happens to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. My pages http://www.cleanedison.com/leed and http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/leed-green-associate suddenly dropped off the map over the past 2 weeks for the keyword "LEED Certification" I tried to limit the number of times "LEED" was mentioned on the first URL (/leed) to try to combat an over-optimization penalty but I did not for the second (/leed-green-associate). Both of them have fallen precipitously and are no where to be found on Google. What can I do to troubleshoot this? Is there anyway to guard against this in the future?
Algorithm Updates | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Major Slipping of highly important keywords in a few days
Realized some major slipping on some of my most important keywords- mn realtors and minnesota homes for sale- my site is joeandcindy.com After months of working on traffic, blogs etc, wondering what could slap me 10-25 spots in just a few days. There were no errors showing up on the report that I can see. Just looking for some quick advice on what I might be missing and some quick action steps I might take to reverse the trend. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | jjwelu0