@Kateparish I appreciate that, but if all the content that's paid to be added to a Wiki site is factually correct and verifiable via independent websites would it be worth paying for a listing - could it help with SEO?

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.

Recently I've come across a few websites offering (for a fee) to research, write and publish an entry on the likes of Wikipedia, Citizendium or Wikitia - I thought this might be helpful when it comes to marketing and link building for a brand or individual.

Purchasing guest blog posts is a standard way to obtain a high domain authority in-context backlink, but I wondered if purchasing an entry on one of these human edited encyclopedias would be as effective, better or not worth the money?

It costs quite a bit more than guest posting and blog outreach, but on the other hand they are authoritative websites that also include backlinks.

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Quick question: does Google differentiate between terms that correctly include a hyphen (such as "royalty-free") and those that are incorrect ("royalty free")?

I ask because the correct term "royalty-free"(with a hyphen) receives far less monthly traffic for the same term without the hyphen (according to Moz):

Term | Estimated traffic
"royalty free music" | 11.5-30.3K
"royalty-free music" | 501-850

If Moz views the terms separately then I'd guess that Google does too, in which case the best thing to do for SEO (and increased site traffic) would be to wrongly use "royalty free" without the hyphen. Is that correct?

@EffieH Thanks for the feedback and advice, it is very helpful - I'll give ahref.com a look.

Many thanks for the feedback, it's very helpful.

Hi all,

My understanding of obtaining backlinks by way of blogpost outreach is that it's best to include several outbound links to related high domain websites within blog post copy (as well as a link to the website you're marketing, obviously) such as this post https://www.scoopearth.com/why-should-you-use-royalty-free-music-for-youtube-videos/ or this one https://small-bizsense.com/how-to-create-quality-content-for-your-business/.

However, I've recently read a few articles that suggest that from a human perspective only having one clear link in the copy, such as this post https://www.clichemag.com/entertainment/movies/the-benefits-of-royalty-free-cinematic-music-for-your-videos/, increases the chance of the reader visiting the site in question.

I guess the thinking is that if there's only one link to be clicked on it increases the chances of click-thru, as opposed to the reader possibly clicking on another external link that's only there because of current SEO advice.

So is it best to follow SEO guidelines and include several outbound links within guest blog posts, or is it better to only have the one link to your client's site (to focus the readers attention on it)?

Moz keeps saying that these websites (amongst others)...

https://toolszap.com/
https://www.findwallpaperhd.com/
https://onlinecoursesschools.com/
https://www.tonzo.com/

...are linking to one of my client sites at https://www.scamblermusic.com

The websites in question clearly aren't related and aren't linking to the site, and there's no reference to Scambler Music anywhere in the source code.

Why does Moz keep listing backlinks that simply don't appear to exist?

@jasontorney Hi, I had the same problem after moving several of my websites to a Virtual Private Server that had enhanced security features.

One of these features was specifically to stop the Moz bot from crawling websites, and the hosting engineers advised they had done this because it was particularly aggressive in nature.

With my VPS control panel I have found the switch that allows me to disable bot blocking, and I occasionally do this if I'm grading a page with Moz, but advice from hosting support was to otherwise leave it active to protect the websites from attached (which means I don't get feedback from Moz crawls).

If you check with your hosting company you may find that they have a similar bot blocker configured for security purposes.

Many thanks for this, it's really helpful.

Many thanks for the feedback, it's very helpful.