18 May 2020
SEO And Stop Words – Everything You Need To Know
The top digital agency in Bury changes tack this week, to another of our core digital agency services – search engine optimisation, or SEO. In this blog we’re going to tell you all about ‘stop words’. What they are, how they affect your SEO and search engine ranking, and more. So, read on as the top digital agency in Bury de-mystify search engine optimisation just a little bit more… You might even get a better handle on how our digital agency services in this area can help you too…
Point 1: What is a Stop Word?
This is the key question we must answer before we go any further. In the SEO world, a ‘stop word’ is a word that is ignored by a search engine’s text crawler. That is, the reading software search engines use to understand what your web page is about and rank it accordingly. Usually, stop words are commonly used words that have little bearing on what you’re actually searching for. We’re talking about words like ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘of’ and so on.
However, the search engine optimisation team at Bury’s best digital agency know that if it changes the intent of a search term, then crawlers won’t ignore what would otherwise be a stop word. For an example, think about this. Put ‘Enterprise’ into Google and you could reasonably expect to see results about a specific car rental company. Someone searching ‘The Enterprise’ however, is more likely to be looking for an object of some sort named ‘Enterprise’…. A building, or a ship for example. In this case the reading software doesn’t ignore the stop word, and returns different results for each term.
Point 2: How Can Stop Words Affect SEO?
It has long been held by the SEO industry that using stop words is a bad thing for search engine optimisation and site ranking. Because words that may be changing the nature of your site content may be being ignored, until recently it was believed that stop words adversely affected both your own content’s ability to rank well, and a search engine’s ability to return the most relevant results for a search. Specific hotspots for this include key search engine optimisation areas like the page title, meta description and URL.
However, recent updates to the Google algorithm mean that stop words won’t harm your SEO as much as they used to. In fact, the ‘Bert’ update sought to better recognise well written and informative content. And as any content writer will tell you, you can’t write content that sounds natural without using SEO stop words.
Point 3: How Can Seek Social Help?
As with a lot of search engine optimisation tasks though, striking the right balance can be tricky. These days for good SEO optimization UK, you need enough stop words to make a text sound natural, but not so many that it stops the reading software from correctly categorising your content. However, that’s where Seek Social and our SEO digital agency services come in. Bury’s leading digital agency have expert SEO copywriters on staff with extensive experience in this area… They know how to walk this particular search engine optimisation tightrope successfully. They know what Google and other search engines are looking for and they’re ready to provide those expert digital agency services to you!
Point 4: The Verdict
So, what’s our final word on SEO stop words? Well – as we mentioned above – there are both pros and cons to them. However, here’s where the team at Bury’s number one digital agency stand on the issue. Good SEO content these days needs to use stop words in order to sound natural and satisfy Google’s ‘Bert’ update. However, over-using them can have a detrimental effect on your content’s ability to rank. Therefore, moderation is the key.
And finally, if you’d like some help perfecting your use of stop words or search engine optimisation in general then by all means get in touch with your leading provider of digital agency services – Seek Social! You can reach us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram on social media, by email to ‘hello@seeksocial.co.uk’, or by calling 0161 761 1800!
