If you’re looking to optimise your content for search engine optimisation (SEO), you’ve probably undertaken your own research into the list of keywords you can use to make your copy as Google-friendly as possible.
Once you’ve got your handy list of keywords at the ready, you may be wondering how on earth you can fit them into your content in a way that appears natural and relevant.
Let’s say you own a coffee shop in Chester. You’ve done some digging, and among the list of keywords you want to use (surprisingly) is “coffee shop Chester”, because this is the exact phrase your target audience is searching for.
While this is all well and good, taking the phrase “coffee shop Chester” and embedding it into your text verbatim is likely going to look awkward and out of place, given that it’s not a complete sentence in itself.
Fortunately, that’s where stop words come in. These handy words are made up of articles, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns that help link the rest of the sentence together so that it makes sense. Because Google values user experience above all else, the search engine typically ignores stop words (as long as a sentence isn’t stuffed with them), as they help phrases flow better.
Research has shown that articles containing stop words are likely to rank more highly, as they make better grammatical sense and are therefore more valuable to the reader.
So, to take the earlier example, if you used the keyword “coffee shop Chester” in your content, Google is less likely to rank this because it sounds less natural, as though it’s been shoehorned in. Following Google’s Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines, lower quality content (such as content containing poor grammar) is unlikely to take the top spot in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
On the other hand, by including stop words such as “coffee shop in Chester”, “flat whites near Chester” or “best Americano in Chester”, you’ll increase the chance of those on the hunt for a caffeine fix finding you through a quick Google search, as these terms are more likely to be rewarded.
Need help making sense of SEO? Why not join one of our upcoming workshops, where you’ll discover how it all works, and how you can implement the best tips and tricks in your own strategy.
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