Sometime back we built out a few pages targeting few keywords that were not really relevant to our site but just aimed at google adsense and income from it. I know its a bad idea..well not mine though. Then about 3 months back we redirected (301 redirect) all those pages back to our home page. We didn't want those pages anymore. Now, after three months, we are not ranking for those keywords anymore but google analytics shows those keywords in the top 100 keywords that send the most traffic to our site. Bounce rate is high because of that. Its like a backfire. I double checked and we don't rank for those keywords anymore. Its a mystery to me now as to how people are entering our site through those keywords. How is this possible?
Probably not a great strategy to begin with - why waste time writing unique content about an irrelevant subject?
Scrap the keywords that are bringing useless traffic and redesign your keyword strategy. Relevant keywords will help in this case
Hello, If your still receiving traffic from those keywords it might be because you have some links pointed towards those pages. If you really want to get rid of that traffic, you'll have to first remove the 301 redirects. After that, go to google webmaster tools and ask them to remove those urls from their index (if they're still there). As for those 301 redirects, even if the pages are not there anymore, and are not cached or not in index, there might still be links with those keywords pointing right now at your home page. This is making your home page rank for those keywords, even if they are irrelevant to your content. By removing those 301 redirects to your home page, you basically remove those links that are ranking your page for those keywords. However, even after you do this, the results will take a while to be visible.