If I insert a "stop" word into a long tail keyword, will it break it up?
-
I'm in the legal industry, and a lot of the long tail keywords I'm finding are search queries that are pinpointed for my location. As a result, I come up with [subject] + [location] as good keywords... for example: "subpoena duces tecum new york." (basically it's a subpoena, just the fancy name). However, I have no clue how to use something like this in a sentence....if I say "subpoena duces tecum IN new york" does the "in" break up the keyword, or is "in" just a stop word that doesn't affect the keyword?
Countless examples of similar keywords "Car accident new york" etc.
Thanks!
-
Welcome to the Moz community, Charles! Posting the question about Hummingbird and cannibalization in a new thread is a smart move, as it will likely get more attention that way. Assuming your new question is answered, it will also help people who have a similar question be able to find an answer that helps them (when they search this forum). So thanks for doing that.
Christy
-
Thank you so much. You raise a question I've been having about Hummingbird and cannibalization, but I'm posting it right now in a separate thread
-
As Russ states, you're far better off to just use language naturally. Google will figure it out. Stop words aren't going to prevent you from outranking the competition. A combination of other factors will, most notably the quantity and quality of incoming links to the page.
-
IMO "stop words" are a hoax.
-
Luckily with the Google Hummingbird update, Google is better able to map together phrases with identical search intent. "Car Accident New York" and "Car Accident in New York" return very similar search results, and you will see this across the board for very slightly modified long tail phrases. I would use the words and phrases in a syntactically and grammatically correct fashion, rather than focus on getting every variant.
-
Yes, the word "in" would separate the keyword, though you technically would still get a reasonable amount of worth from the phrase in general. Some longtail keywords are incredibly difficult to get into content - it may be worthwhile to try to find ones that are high-volume and less abstract.
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
-
What makes a keyword good?
Having taken a day-long course not long ago, I'm new to SEO and I'm struggling to decide which keywords to target. I work in a really niche area: we make booking engines that allow travel agencies to sell flights, hotels, cars and other travel services online. I know there are various tools on the web (and on Moz) which give you the average monthly searches and competition for each term but I still don't understand how to decide which ones to target. For example, the term 'travel systems' gets a high amount of search and the competition for it is high. However, Google brings back results about prams and buggies so I think I should avoid this one. Another is 'travel solutions' which gets a high amount of search and is low on competition. Google brings back results about travel agencies. This is more our area but our target audience is travel agencies so I'm not really sure I'd be attracting the right traffic? I'd be really grateful for any advice that you can give me.
Keyword Research | | noortomlinson0 -
Bye Bye Keyword Difficulty Tool :(
So the Keyword Difficulty Tool will be retired from the end of this month. Is anyone else worried about this? - because I just don't trust the numbers coming back from Keyword Explorer. Never have. I've even raised this with Moz staff previously, when there was a huge difference between the score given by the keyword difficulty tool vs keyword explorer. From what I see in Domain and Page authority and in the SERPs then the score from keyword difficulty tool, was always more accurate, and thankfully have been able to use both tools, but from next month I feel somewhat uneasy about solely relying on the score from Keyword Explorer. Thoughts? and feel free to run your own tests on keywords and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.
Keyword Research | | GregDixson0 -
Local keywords still relevant?
Now with Google localizing search increasingly personalizing queriesquery results, is it still necessary to add geo-specific modifiers to keywords? [reworded for clarity]
Keyword Research | | SSFCU0 -
Weekly Keyword Ranking Report Question
Howdy folks! Okay so apologies for the n00b question, and additional apologies for going over ground that's potentially already been ploughed. I'm compiling a tally of the Weekly Keyword Ranking Report for a client. For the past three reports, the particular keyword I'm logging has remained in the same position. However the Change column shows it as having decreased in rank, by the same amount every week. If there has been no change in the ranking, I would have thought it would display as "Unchanged". As it stands, it shows up in the Declined category, and that seems odd to me. Anyone have an idea as to why this would be happening? Thanks for any input you can provide! Kevin
Keyword Research | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
How are similar keyword phrases related?
I'm new to SEO and have been reading a lot to try to get up to speed. There is one concept that I'm not clear about and am not sure what to search on to find an answer. Let's say I'm trying to target 2 keyword phrases "Wordpress SEO" and "Wordpress SEO plugin". In the content of my web page should I always write "Wordpress SEO plugin" because it'll count towards both phrases I'm trying to target? Or would Google be smart enough to only give me credit for "Wordpress SEO plugin" in that case and I should also put just "Wordpress SEO" in other places in my content? Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks in advance!
Keyword Research | | Yuba302 -
Two for the price of one: Can I rank for multiple keywords when only targeting one keyword?
If I'm optimizing for a specific keyword, is it accurate to assume that by ranking for that specific keyword that I will also be able to rank for similar or root keywords merely by ranking for the original keyword? For example, if I'm targeting 'free online bucket list' is it safe to assume that I will also be able to inadvertently rank for 'online bucket list' or 'free bucket list'? Can I assure clients of this? Or if I'm targeting 'Colorado grocery store' should I also naturally rank for 'grocery store Colorado' and not need to make both of these my targeted keywords?
Keyword Research | | derrickkuhn0 -
Keyword research is tough isn’t it ?
I am only just realising that the Google Keyword Tool I use is aimed at Adwords customers and where competition is stated as low, they mean competition for adverts. When I have a ridiculously low amount of links and an equally low Domain Authority finding keywords is not easy. I presume there is some correlation between the SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty score and the amount of Adwords traffic, but even very low Adwords Traffic Search Terms still seem to be moderately competitive. I guess its a case of plugging away with the Keyword Difficulty tool.
Keyword Research | | jp_cp1