Do exact keyword matches exclude "in", "based" etc?

[mickburkesnr]

I am trying to build a landing page for the search term "web design london" and I have included this search term as well as some variations such as "web design in london", "web design based in london" as the content doesn't really read well if I don't put in a connector word (I can't remember what the term for the use of "in" etc is).

However I am using the Moz On-Page Grader to make sure I'm dotting every i and crossing every t, but it doesn't seem to pick up on the search term when "in" or "based" is used. Now is this a limitation of the On-Page Grader or should I expect Google and other search engines to not pick up on the search term when it contains these sorts of words?

[ClaytonJ]

There are two schools of thought on this.

One school is as you have adopted above, simply frame your title to the customer.  I do not 100% agree as I think there are competitive tensions between "customer v SEO" on various aspects of a site build. One is title - So personally I would delete words "in" as the 512 pixels in your title is valuable space and integral in informing search engines what your site does, so the search engines can match it to searchers intent.  The "in" does not add anything, it is superfluous. I personally prefer "web design london" as it is succinct and straight to the point. I already know you are based in London - so no need to tell me, web design london does that.

Your call, hope that assists.

[DonnaDuncan]

A similar question was asked a while ago and here's what Moz Staffer Keri Morgret had to say.

"Here's some information from Google itself:

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861

Words that are commonly used, like 'the,' 'a,' and 'for,' are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search

• [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization -- Google will not ignore the word 'the' in the first query."

So you can see that there is no definitive list of "stop words"; the answer is contextual. Try your proposed title tag with and without the "stop word". If it has the same meaning both ways, you can safely omit it. If you think it will invoke a better response from viewers or clarifies some subtle distinction and you can fit it in within the known pixel constraints, then consider adding it.

[mickburkesnr]

This makes sense. The content is written in a way that makes it easy for the user to read, I think my concern was whether either Google or Moz itself were smart enough to see that. I guess this is something that will improve in the On-Page Grader over time. Thank you!

[DonnaDuncan]

The Yoast SEO plugin does the same thing. Both it and Moz are intended as a guide only. You have to overlay it with your best judgement.