Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page

[JCN-SBWD]

I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page.

To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100.

“Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content.

Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms:

“free rock music”
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music”

I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”.

“Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content?

By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too.

To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google!

Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.

[Kateparish]

@JCN-SBWD One way to potentially address this issue is to focus on building a strong backlink profile that reinforces your intended keyword associations. Additionally, you may want to consider adding more content to your product pages to further clarify your intended messaging and minimize the potential for negative keyword associations. Finally, it may be worth exploring alternative search engines or platforms to expand your reach and diversify your traffic sources.

[Stramark]

@JCN-SBWD cool! (from a SEO perspective) I would speculate that Google considers this related keywords to the keywords optimized for, and thus ranks for it.
Other option would be that you have incoming links with that keyword. I looked and did not see much of that kind.

You could take the "copyright" keyword off the page for a while and see if it changes. But that would take some time as Google will consider your page relevant to it for at least a while (Sorry)

[emutlu]

@JCN-SBWD i hav similar problems...