Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?

4 replies
  • SEO
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In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their *ahem*... "bedroom performance".

I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources.

I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank.

Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic.

Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity?

I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this?
#content #harm #profanity #rankings #site
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Sorry, no experience with this at all, but now that you are more experienced and eloquent, you might try editing those articles and using more tasteful or scientifically correct terms. No clue about how search engines see it, but ultimately you are writing for human beings and selling to them. I'm sure a certain percentage of people are turned off by it - more than the number of people who would be turned off by more tasteful language. It might also help with link building to be a bit more professional.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    If I understand you correctly you havr a 'dirty' book you wrote ten years ago that is reliably earning about $80/day TODAY....is that correct? It continues to produce reliable income though you spend just a bit of time updating here and there?


    Why would you want to change that? It's clear whatever promotion or targeting you are using is reaching the right audience for that product. This is a textbook (sorry) example of 'passive income'.

    IF you have a site earning reliable income year after year...you have a cash cow. I wouldn't take a chance on ruining that by chasing google approval. But that's just me and I'm not an SEO expert.



    What you might do is start a similar site - with similar product and content - but a 'cleaner' version. Use that 'sister site' to appeal to google and see if you can replicate the sales of the original site.
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  • Profile picture of the author David C.
    Sh*t... it's like hearing both sides of my brain talking to me...

    Also, to clarify, $80 dollars on good days which is becoming less and less... and watching my traffic drop with each update...
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  • Profile picture of the author Marque
    that's interesting. I haven't had enough experience in the area to give proper insight, but I would assume you would reach more people with more "correct" language. Goodluck!
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