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Take care of stop words and filter words
Google and other big search engines ignore common words such
as 'the', 'of', 'where', as well as certain single digits
and single letters. These words are called "filter words".
They are ignored because they tend to slow down a search without
improving the results.
Of course, every search engine has its own list of filter
words. We've found out that the following words seem to be
ignored by most search engines:
a, about, an, and, are, as, at, be, by, from, how, i,
in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the, this, to, was, we, what,
when, where, which, with
* What does this mean to your site?
Search engines consider keywords in the title, in the body
text and in link texts of a Web page as an important ranking
criteria.
Be careful when you choose your keywords for the title and
the rest of your Web page. If your Web page title contains
a list of filter words you won't get any results. You might
also dilute the effectiveness of your other keywords if you
include too many filter words in the title.
Many search engines recommend limiting the number of letters
in the title and in the meta tags. If your Web page title
or the meta tags contain too many filter words, you might
reach the character limit before your important keywords begin.
* Some words can get you banned on search engines
While filter words might dilute the effectiveness of your
other keywords, some words might get your Web page banned
on search engines. These words are called stop words.
Adult words and phrases that contain sexual content are the
most common stop words. However, some search engines build
custom stop word lists to penalize Web sites that use "keyword
stuffing". Some sites use the same keyword over and over
on their pages to get a high rank for that keyword on search
engines, even if it is not related to their content.
Of course, search engines try to find those sites and they
penalize Web pages that use keyword stuffing. Unfortunately,
some sites are penalized although their webmasters didn't
try to spam the search engines just because they use a keyword
too many times.
That's why keyword analysis and the right keyword density
is very important for a successful Web site. If the keyword
density is too low, you won't get a good ranking, if it's
too high, your site might get accused of keyword stuffing.
* Summary
- Use your most important keywords at the beginning of the
title, meta tags, link texts and body text.
- Avoid using filter words to increase the effectiveness
of your keywords.
- Make sure that your Web pages have the right keyword density
and don't contain stop words.
The right keyword mix on your Web pages will help you to
improve your ranking on all important search engines.
To find out the keyword density of your Web site, you might
want to try the freeware
edition of Internet Business Promoter.
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