Ranking for the keyword "Free" Please Help

I am working on a site for a client who has brought up they have been getting calls for "free junk removal" which they also see as a term in their reports. I got into their search console and can see that the keyword in question is attached to like 3 different pages. They use the terms "free estimate" and "cluuter-free" and things of that nature but nowhere does the content say the exact keyword that they are ranking for.

Is fixing this as simple as removing some of those instances of "free" use words? Can they still use "free-estimates" and not have this attached to them? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I honestly don't understand what you'd like to fix. If your client gets calls about free junk removal having the word "free" in their pages is good and you don't want to fix this, you want more of it

And what should they not have attached to what?

tazarbm said:

I honestly don't understand what you'd like to fix. If your client gets calls about free junk removal having the word "free" in their pages is good and you don't want to fix this, you want more of it

And what should they not have attached to what?

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They are complaining to me because they are getting calls for free removal. They don't do free work. From what I can tell is it's by association keywords. They mention the word "free" often on their pages but not in the context Google is picking up.

And when I say attached to the page, 3 of their pages are cannibalized for that keyword.

ErrlyBird said:

They are complaining to me because they are getting calls for free removal. They don't do free work. From what I can tell is it's by association keywords. They mention the word "free" often on their pages but not in the context Google is picking up.

And when I say attached to the page, 3 of their pages are cannibalized for that keyword.

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ok, I think I understand what you mean

To answer your questions...

ErrlyBird said:

Is fixing this as simple as removing some of those instances of "free" use words?

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you might not want to hear this but I don't think there's a way of fixing this unless you re-write the content (and even then it might not work).

Maybe check if there's a way in the SEO plugin that your client uses to add that term as negative keyword, similarly to how Google Ads work

ErrlyBird said:

Can they still use "free-estimates" and not have this attached to them?

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if they manage to get rid of that term somehow yeah, they can use "free estimates" safely then. Although, if they really want to use (and rank for) this term they should optimize the content for it. Tell them to use tools like Frase / Surfer SEO / Neuron Writer (or even SEO plugins like Rankmath, The SEO Framework... even Yoast I think has this function) to get recommendations on content optimization with the right LSI terms / SEO entities.

There might be better ways of fixing this issue, but I don't know them, sorry!