Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Miriam

Thanks Ian - yes it seems a real struggle to deal with the difference between which search phrases have the most searches and which search phrases sound right in the context of a web page.

Thanks Jared

Thanks Ben - I'll be sure to check those out

Thanks Micah

Actually [painter new york] has an exact search volume of 140 whereas [new york painter] only has 22...

Thanks Ben - so you are saying that to target the difficult phrase 'painter new york' organically, I could optimise the page for 'new york painter' and that would work just as well.

Thanks Micah but this was just a made up example - it's the general point that I'm after - apologies for the confusion

Hi,

This may be a stupid question but...

Google ignores short/common words like 'in', so if I optimize a page for 'painter in new york' will it rank just as well for 'painter new york'?

In Google's keyword tool, exact match gives [painter new york] 140 searches per month but [painter in new york] gets < 10.

However, it is much more difficult to write 'painter new york' naturally into body copy than it is 'painter in new york'.

So what do I do?

Thanks

Thanks Marko.

If 'in' is a stop word and ignored by Google, then why does Google's keyword tool give such different exact results for [builders manchester] and [builders in manchester]?

I'm very much interested in this question as well.

Someone told me that small words such as 'in' are stop words and as such ignored by Google and that [painters texas] would be the same as [painters in texas].

But in that case, why does Google's keyword tool give such different exact results for these 2 phrases?

Anyone else got any input on this?

Thanks