Does Google pick up on words such as "in", "the", "and" etc?
-
If I have in my meta-title e.g Holidays Ireland, but i have in my description for grammer purposes Holidays in Ireland will google see these as 2 separate keywords and will SEOMoz grade me lower for doing this? Or is holidays Ireland included in Holidays in Ireland because google doesnt pick up on "in" ??
I would appreciate your help on this.
-
There was a time when Google simply ignored so-called "stop words", for processing efficiency, and so they two queries in your example were essentially the same. It looks like that has changed over time, though. See this post from 2008 by Bill Slawski (an expert on Google patents and technology):
http://www.seobythesea.com/2008/01/new-google-approach-to-indexing-and-stopwords/
...and a quick experiment someone did in 2010 that seems to confirm that:
http://www.dougwilliams.com/blog/seo/stop-words-does-google-ignore-these-anymore.php
In my experience, it's a bit specific to the query and competition. In many cases, the addition or subtractions of a stop word may not make much of a difference, but in your case it probably does. If the term you want to target is "Holidays in Ireland" and the Top 10 for that term seems different from the shorter term, I'd say to use "in". I'm seeing some differences between those two sets of Top 10 results (not huge, but some).
-
Thank you matthew. That helps alot.
-
Within your title tag, you shouldn't generally use connecting words like 'and', 'is', etc. Stick to just using 'Holidays Ireland' within this part of your webpage.
For the META description you should then use connecting words to make it coherent and understandable to users. The META description doesn't actually play an effect on your SEO rankings but remember that it will show keywords in bold if a user has searched for 'Holidays in Ireland', which will increase your click-through rate.
Hope this helps
Matt.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Do I Rank For This Type of Key Word?
Hello, We're a physical therapy practice and rank high for our physical therapy clinic and those type of keywords; however, how do I rank for keywords such as: back pain treatment? herniated disc treatment? We have pages specific to these keywords but aren't ranking. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | scottgray06200 -
Does Google Understand H2 As Subtitle?
I use some HTML 5 tags on my custom template. I implement <header class="entry-header-outer"> Flavour & Chidinma – 40 Yrs 40 Yrs by Flavour & Chidinma </header> html code. h1 tag serves as the title, while h2 tag servers as the subtitle of the post. Take a look at it here: https://xclusiveloaded.com/flavour-chidinma-40-yrs/ I want to know if it's ok or should I remove the h2 tag. Guys, what is your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Kingsmart4 -
"?inline=true" Duplicate Page
I have a new Drupal client and am getting a duplicate page error and indicates "?inline=true" after the domain as the culprit. Google comes up empty 😞
On-Page Optimization | | JimCoarse0 -
Google Is Ranking the Wrong Page
Howdy Folks- I have a case where Google is ranking the wrong page for a couple of different keywords. The home page is: http://healthtn.com Most notably, we're trying to optimize the home page for "Tennessee Health Insurance" but the below page is what continually ranks for it, and does so very poorly. We used to be page two with the home page, now we are page four and it ranks the following page. http://healthtn.com/tennessee/health-insurance/student I have started directing our Internal Linking to reflect the correct anchor text but succeeded in losing ranking for the term, but am still ranking the wrong page. Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CRO_first0 -
Website was given to someone else, does a "move" or something need to be performed in Webmaster Tools?
A website was given to another person for their business. None of the original webpages remain they have all been removed. There is nothing on that domain now. Is there some notification that needs to be made in webmaster tools to make Google aware of this?
On-Page Optimization | | will21120 -
How does Google Detect which keywords my website should show up for in the SE?
When I checked my Google Webmaster Tools I found that my website is showing up for keywords that I didn't optimize for ... for example I optimize my website for "funny pictures with captions", and the website is showing up for "funny images with captions". I know that this is good, but the keyword is dancing all around, sometimes I search for "funny pictures with captions" and I show up in the 7th page, and some time I don't show up. and the same goes for the other keyword. of course I am optimizing for more than two keywords but the results is not consistent. my question is how does Google decide which keywords you website should show up for? Is it the on-page keywords?, or is it the off-page anchor text keywords? Thank you in advance ...
On-Page Optimization | | FarrisFahad
FarrisFahad0 -
Solve "Too many links on page"
Hello, I own a Opencart site with a lot of products , I am getting this error in the campaign report, how can I fix it? Read other members replys but I dont understand how .. I would appreacite if you could explain it easy because my native language is spanish and my english is really poor I am really happy of find this site, incredible quality, thank you very much!
On-Page Optimization | | matiw0 -
Google cached snapshots and last indexed
My question is I noticed today that the snap shots of my main pages were outdated. About a month. Then I clicked on the "Learn More" link about cahced images and Google says "Google crawls the web and takes snapshots of each page. When you click Cached, you'll see the webpage as it looked when we last indexed it." I know this sounds really dumb, but does that really mean the last time Google indexed that page? So the changes I have made since then have not been taken yet?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0