[Tim Smith]

Hi,

Been getting up to speed on SEO best practices etc. I notice that the word 'and' is classed as a "stop word". Would it be better to use and ampersand (&) or is 'and' okay in title tags? Do search engines realise that the ampersand and 'and' are in fact the same thing? Just curious....

Thanks in advance!

This post has been edited by Tim Smith: 22 August 2011 - 09:25 AM

[jheg]

I'm not sure the two can be used in the same way for example:

I could say Country & Western or Country and Western but I don't think ampersand can be used in the following context:

After she drank her cup of tea she went into the garden & watered the tomatoes.

I thought, I might be wrong, that ampersand only works when the two things belong together like Smith & Sons, Mr & Mrs etc

Not sure it helps your original question though?

[Tim Smith]

Thanks jheg - what you say makes sense - just wondering what the implications are of having a "stop" word in my title tag. Going by your example, for my usage it should technically be "and".

This post has been edited by Tim Smith: 22 August 2011 - 12:10 PM

[Pixel_Donkey]

This is a very interesting topic. I'm wondering if Google treats "and" as a separator between two possible keyword phrases.

I did a search for:

• Laurel & Hardy
  
• Laurel and Hardy
  
• Laurel Hardy
  
• Laurel
  
• Hardy

The top 3 bring up pretty much the same pages with the wiki and Laurel and Hardy site fighting for number 1.

Search for Laurel and Hardy separately and they obviously rank lower.

If a user searches for and or & its not made bold in title tags, also if you search for a bunch of phrases and add in the word and it seems to ignore the word and. However if you search for the word "Apples and" then "apples" the word counts because its in some domain names such as applesandsnakes.org

This leads me to guess that your title tag might only help if the user is searching for both terms but then it's going to be down to competition of those two keywords. Also having and in your domain name also helps when searching for & / and.

I wonder what happens if you have a page called "Apples and Pears" and then focus 2 anchor text phrases at it.

[rallport]

I'd personally try to avoid stop words at all costs in title tags - as it's essentially your most important onsite factor.

Just a random thought here, but if you add '&' as opposed to '&' into your title title you'll be taking up 5 characters - as this will be needed to get your html to validate. Don't quote me on that - going to check now

However, at the same time, if I was searching for info about the birds and the bees and type "the birds and the bees", not "the birds & the bees".

Weird one

E.g. D&G - use an ampersand: see http://www.dolcegabbana.com/deg/

This post has been edited by rallport: 22 August 2011 - 06:42 PM

[jheg]

I wondered how many characters that would use in the title tag too. I'm guessing that it's based on the displayed characters so & counts as 1 character?

[rallport]

jheg, on 22 August 2011 - 07:28 PM, said:

I wondered how many characters that would use in the title tag too. I'm guessing that it's based on the displayed characters so & counts as 1 character?

'&' would be 5, because you need to write it as an HTML entitiy in order for your html to validate

[jheg]

What I mean is the HTML code would be '&' but that would output as '&'. Is it the output that you need to keep an eye on the number of characters or the HTML code you need to count the characters?

[jheg]

/\ for seo purposes

[neil0wen]

There's two parts to this, how it affects the websites position in the SERPs and the impact of whether a visitor will click on a website if the title doesn't make much sense.

I would advise to avoid stop words as much as possible, and only use it in a when absolutely necessary.

I searched for the term 'web design' and 7 of the websites listed on page one use a stop word. Two of those sites use an ampersand. I hope this is of some help!

[rallport]

jheg, on 22 August 2011 - 11:02 PM, said:

What I mean is the HTML code would be '&' but that would output as '&'. Is it the output that you need to keep an eye on the number of characters or the HTML code you need to count the characters?

Nope

You're inserting the html entity directly into your title tag - which takes up 5 characters, even though it outputs to the screen as single characters.

[rallport]

neil0wen, on 23 August 2011 - 09:07 AM, said:

I searched for the term 'web design' and 7 of the websites listed on page one use a stop word. Two of those sites use an ampersand. I hope this is of some help!

That's probably not the best term to have used as an example as that particular phrase is stupidly competitive - lots and lots of offsites factors will be ranking those sites, not onpage stuff - that will play little part.

[jheg]

rallport, on 23 August 2011 - 06:01 PM, said:

Nope

You're inserting the html entity directly into your title tag - which takes up 5 characters, even though it outputs to the screen as single characters.

we got there in the end

[soppnoxseo]

Is stop words been neglecting by google nowadays.. there are many website claims that stop words are now getting indexed by google....is it true?....

This post has been edited by soppnoxseo: 24 August 2011 - 07:03 AM

[rallport]

soppnoxseo, on 24 August 2011 - 07:02 AM, said:

Is stop words been neglecting by google nowadays.. there are many website claims that stop words are now getting indexed by google....is it true?....

... and what websites would they be?

[neil0wen]

rallport, on 23 August 2011 - 06:02 PM, said:

That's probably not the best term to have used as an example as that particular phrase is stupidly competitive - lots and lots of offsites factors will be ranking those sites, not onpage stuff - that will play little part.

I'm not sure I agree with you on that one. I think on page SEO still has a massive part to play.

For example if you where to type 'social networking', you would think that Facebook would come top just by the sheer amount of backlinks, however it comes 7th. OK, its been beaten by some reputable websites, but lets face it, nothing comes close to Facebook in the amount of backlinks it has.

Facebook gets all its visitors though other websites and reputation, therefore it does not care about SEO. Look at its homepage and you will see very little content! Even the most popular websites needs the basic SEO factors to rank well in Google.

[ahughes3]

Ok, starting to go off topic there a bit boys!

Tim, it would have been helpful at the start to include your proposed title as you would probably find it narrows down the debate a bit and gets you a result quicker.

Essentially, there may be occasions when the "and" makes sense from a reading point of view, for example a book title:

"Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs"

On other occasions it's not needed, for example:

"Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban" could be "Harry Potter | Prisoner of Azkaban"

I think it's a judgement decision based on three factors:

Is it going to look stupid if I leave the and out?
Will it make no readable difference and so it can be left out?
What are the others doing that rank high for the particular search term?

Considering these three things will help you make a more informed choice, but at the end of the day, you are in essence sacrificing a valuable keyword opportunity for a stop word which Google does not count.

There is no right or wrong, it depends on what's important to you.

Also, for people like Dolce & Gabbana, they are household names so they probably don't need to worry quite as much about their title tags to win business.

As always, just my view, take it as you will.