Should I treat 'in' as a keyword?

How do I deal with 'in'?

[Paul_Clarke]

Hi,

Please can someone tell me if I want to optimise a website for the following do I need to include 'in' in links, page titles etc

aservice in yourtown

or will

aservice yourtown

be best,

I know users search both using the 'in' and without.

[edited by: Paul_Clarke at 1:06 pm (utc) on May 12, 2008]

[htdawg]

I usually include "in" when I write my keyword descriptions & titles. that way I can catch both ways, with & without "in"

[Receptional Andy]

There was a time when words like 'in' were treated as stopwords and so were a different question entirely. These days, you can search Google for 'in' [google.com] and so it clearly makes a difference if you're looking from a purely SEO perspective.

As far as I'm aware, most users don't include 'in' within location-based queries, but of course, this depends a lot on audience, and other specifics.

Just as important, however, is making sure you're using natural text that visitors will respond well to (and are perhaps also more likely to search for). Since a title is a fairly unique snippet of text, you can easily omit common words and keep things natural, although you'll likely find that in other areas using 'in' is more appropriate.

Personally, I like to make titles as close to normal language structure as is practical, so I often include 'in' for geographical references.

I'd say whether to include such words depends mainly on your writing style ;)

[Paul_Clarke]

Thank you both for your responses.

I have collected some stats from my website and find for

'service location' = 948 hits

'service in location' = 743 hits

So I guess I need to work on both keywords sets.