Should stop words be used in titles? I'm aiming for natural title structure.
-
I have fully optimized on-page SEO for the following keyword (not really the one I use, but it can serve as an example):
-personal driver in los angeles
Even though "in" is a stop word, I prefer to have a natural (non-robotic) structure for the title - I do this by including "in". I believe that "personal driver los angeles" is too spammy and too robotic.
Is this a good or a bad thing?
-
I just gave a suggestion you have to do your keyword research to see what keyword makes sense to go with, aka the one that gives most focused traffic that you are after.
As for body text vs title, the general consensus is to keep the keyword same in the title as in the body text, alt tags, meta description etc.
Hope this helps!
-
Great question that all of us have probably asked at some point, but as Vadim pointed out whenever there's a question in regards to content always ask yourself are you doing this for the spiders or human. If you go with the spiders you might have a short term win, but in the long term you should always think about the human when creating content. These rules/thoughts should always be asked if you have any SEO hesitations.
-
But wouldn't "los angeles personal driver" also trigger broad search term "personal driver in los angeles" and show up on the top - in case the page has a very good SEO.
What if I use "personal driver in los angeles" in body text to keep the natural flow and use "personal driver los angeles" for the title?
-
In this example follow your natural human instinct, not your robot/SEO instinct.
Human instinct: personal driver in los angeles
Robot/SEO/keyword mindset, personal driver los angeles.
However another way of doing this is "los angeles personal driver" doesn't need stop-word and sounds natural. Also sometimes los angeles personal driver might be searched more often than personal driver los angeles see an image I attached as an example
But again in all of this try to write content for the person and not the search engines, so keep that human instinct on when you do this. Hope this helps
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
-
Why doesn't MailChimp use an SSL certificate on their homepage?
MailChimp, one of the biggest brands in online marketing doesn't use an SSL certificate on their homepage...Is there a simple reason for this? Wouldn't they get an SEO boost from having one?
On-Page Optimization | | WickVideo1 -
Using Google structured Data for SEO benefit
Hi there I run www.isacleanse.com.au and I've set up some Structured data using Google Webmaster Tools which says it will be picked up during the next Google update (has been set up over 4 weeks ago), however I dont seem to see any of the structured data for the products/reviews/ratings etc coming through in search results. Question at hand: Is there additional things I need to do in the code of the website or should this be sufficient? (see attached screenshot) szpFUpX
On-Page Optimization | | IsaCleanse1 -
Advantage of using LocalBusiness rich snippets?
I am working on a website that has company profile pages. What are the advantages of using LocalBusiness rich snippets for profiles?
On-Page Optimization | | calf0 -
How do you optimize for keyword phrases that don't follow natural speech patters?
For instance, We have a phase "solar panels for home" that sends decent traffic to our site, but I'm sure we could be capturing more if any of our content was optimized better for it. But how do you optimize for a phrase that makes you sound like a robot if you use it verbatim?
On-Page Optimization | | wreevesc0 -
Altering site structure
I work for a business that operates several sites that were developed a very long time ago. We've been making many different changes over the past 12-18 months to improve these sites in several different ways. One area that we've never discussed or attempted is general site structure. Its pretty obvious that when the business was started they had never heard of information architecture or usability design. To make matters worse, the internal linking strategy appears to have been link everything to everything. Well after being told that it couldn't be done - I'm getting our team to say we must focus on this, if for no other reason that to help consumers figure out how to navigate through our site. Today we essentially have a series of category / information pages. In some cases, we hang more detailed topical content related to a category /informational page in a hub and spoke manner. Although remember what I said about linking everything to everything. In reality there are a series of subtopics that should been designed for every category / informational area. Instead, what happened is in some cases the subtopic is integrated into the hub or category page, in other situations is hung off the page as a spoke page and in others the subtopic isn't even covered. The plan is to standardize - each category will have 'n' subtopics (~10-12, we're still working this out). From a navigational standpoint users will be able to easily navigate both across categories as well as subtopics within a category as well as between categories within adjacent/similar subtopics. This is essentially a grid if that makes sense. The question is this - we have some keywords that do well in SEO and many many more that do not and the trend has not been our friend. We're considering keeping the URLs of the pages associated with strong keywords the same within the nav structure, even though this might mean the URL for a spoke page will be inconsistent with the spoke page name from a different category. I don't see any real danger for pages that either are not associated with any ranking keywords or only very weak keywords. Maybe I'm wrong. What things should we consider in this change? We believe that this standardization should help consumers find the information they are looking for in a much more efficient manner, so page views/visit should go up. Additionally, this prepares us for category and subtopic comparison pages and other added functionality being added in a logical manner. We also think that as we add depth about a subtopic, it will be easier for us to acquire links to our site because the subtopics within a category will appeal to different websites. This is by no means a small project. We have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Do folks think this is a worthwhile endeavor? We've spent a lot of time cleaning up H1 tags, structure of our pages, anchor tags, page load order and speed, image caching, etc. Site structure, URL length and internal link structure are essentially what is left. Once these are done we intend to really get going on better and more organized content on our site. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Allstar1 -
What is a better mobile domain from an SEO perspective an m.example.com or using your regular domain with user agent detection?
Just wondering what domain is more beneficial for a mobile site and why.
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0 -
20 x '400' errors in site but URLs work fine in browser...
Hi, I have a new client set-up in SEOmoz and the crawl completed this morning... I am picking up 20 x '400' errors, but the pages listed in the crawl report load fine... any ideas? example - http://www.morethansport.co.uk/products?sortDirection=descending&sortField=Title&category=women-sports clothing
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0
