Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Dr. Pedram Kahe on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/05/2014).

Is "of" considered a stop word in an URL? Your help is appreciated

Is "of" considered a stop word in an URL? Your help is appreciated

-.com/causes of heel pain
-.com/causes heel pain?
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Dr. Pedram Kahen: Is "of" considered a stop work in an URL? Your help is appreciated

    -.com/causes of heel pain
    -.com/causes heel pain
  • Jim Munro: I am not an expert, Dr., but maybe +David Amerland ;would be the best person to address this. My first thought would be to include the "of" because leaving it out changes the meaning but I also wonder if exclusion of stopwords makes sense any more, and I'd like to hear what David has to say.
  • Brent Wildman: Unless the word "of" is part of a brand or a key phrase such as "king of the hill" it's fine to leave it out.
  • Kuldeep Singh: +Dr. Pedram Kahen ; First of all there is no value of URL in ranking if you are thinking it does.

    and if you have a blog then you should customize your url stripping out stop keywords from the URL of the page.

    check other popular blog post they avoid using stop keyword and keep their url short and memorable. ;

    either keep "/causes-heel-pain" or "/heel-pain-causes" this help Google to understand better. you should keep "of" in your title.
  • David Amerland: +Jim Munro ;thank you for pinging me here. Stop words in search change the meaning of the query and the results that come up. URLs, at the moment, are still indexed in a traditional URL way (i.e. the length of the URL is key, where the keywords come in relation to that length is important and stop words in a URL, as far as I know, have not yet acquired any more importance than they used to). ;

    While we have had repeated evidence of stop words playing a critical role in search queries the same is not yet true of URLs. There is also the added psychological factor of ease of use when users look at a URL quickly and remember it. Evidence shows that the more key strokes they have to input to type it the greater the possibility of errors creeping in. ;
  • Jim Munro: Thank you, David. I appreciate that you would take the trouble. :)
  • David Amerland: +Jim Munro ;every bit helps when it comes to raising our understanding. It was a good question. ;
  • Dr. Pedram Kahen: Thank you for your input

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 02/05/2014).

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