In your efforts to optimize your website for search engines, you may have come across the concept of SEO stop words.
But what are SEO stop words? How do they impact your SEO? And should you worry about them in your SEO strategy?
What are SEO stop words?
Stop words are actually common words that search engines may ignore both in search queries and search results. Think articles, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns. For example, words like “the,” “any,” “in” or “a.”
See this comprehensive list of SEO stop words.
Stop words typically don’t change the meaning of a query but are definitely needed in your content to properly structure sentences.
Words that Google ignores in search
On the flip side, if you Google “churches in Tulsa” versus “churches Tulsa,” there’s no contextual difference in the meaning of the query. The stop word in this example is “in,” but it is not necessary to perform the intended search.
Of course, as search engines continue to evolve, they likely will use some stop words to better understand the intention of searches. However, Google has not officially confirmed either way their stance on stop words.
Find out how to check your Google search ranking for free.
Where to use (or not use) stop words
As far as your page URLs, a simple structure is best. Often, your CMS or webmaster will automatically pull your page title into your page URL. This can make your URL rather long.
Avoid using stop words in your page titles
Ideally, in this case, it’s a best practice to remove stop words from your page URL to shorten and simplify. Just make sure that what you’re removing doesn’t change the context of the keywords left behind. And Google favors simple and short URL structures.
Don’t optimize page headers
When it comes to page headings and the title tags on search engine results pages, it’s a best practice to not remove these words.
This is because they do show in search results. Removing them makes for an awkward reading experience for users who could potentially click through to your website. So, you definitely want to prioritize the user experience here.
In a similar sense, you should never remove these words from your body content. Yes, you want to improve your SEO every chance you get, but your body content is the meat that users are looking for. Stop words are needed for the best possible user experience.
All in all, you shouldn’t worry too much about these words in your SEO strategy. The primary focus should be user experience first followed by SEO best practices after.
Find out if you’re making any of these 13 common mistakes with your SEO, and check out our 13 tips to get your website indexed by Google faster.
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