Title and H1 Text Stop Words

[the_sponge]

Will using a stopword such as 'the' as the first word of your page title lower relevancy or otherwise be a detriment?

[webboy1]

I don't think it will have a bad effect on relevancy. Relevancy would only really be affected if a high percentage of your page content was made up of non-important words, with only a small percentage being made up of relevant keywords.

Away from SE's, is there no other way in which the title doesn't begin with 'the'?

We have similar words in our titles, but it's really unavoidable. It's a case of getting the balance between relevant keywords and plain english - it's not just SE's that read the site.

We simply try and word our titles etc in such a way that they are clear, in plain english, but make the most of keyword relevancy.

Hope this helps.