Understanding Stop Words Search Engine Optimization Google Bing Yahoo

What Is A Stop Word?

Stop words are words that every website uses. “Stop Words” was a term coined to describe the words search engines are programmed to ignore. Here is a small list of stop words.

• a
• and
• is
• on
• of
• or
• the
• was
• with

I hope you get the idea. Take a look at the title of my post here. I wanted it to make sense to people but I also wanted to leave out stop words. I could of written it with stop words in it like this. How To Understand Stop Words For Search Engine Optimization On Google Bing Yahoo. Can you pick out the stop words in that title? It’s not that hard to do. So I changed it to, “Understanding Stop Words Search Engine Optimization Google Bing Yahoo”. I removed the stop words and people will understand what I am writing about.

Sometimes when we are writing we want to get something done and overlook this. I am guilty of is as well. This will affect your rank because if you have words in your title that are going to be ignored then you have wasted space in your title. If you are using the Yoast SEO tool you will also get frustrated.

Stop words will NOT keep you from being indexed. Basically what you need to know is that valuable real estate in your title tag will be ignored if you use them. Sometimes you will need to use a stop word in order to make sense. Removing stop words is a suggestion and not a rule.