I've tended to ignore the "stop" words when working in a local market and concentrate on natural sounding content. If you're trying to rank for something in highly competitive keywords you have to use every trick in the book but you can get some pretty impressive results with just the basics when you're only competing with other local businesses.

I think my wife's law practice website still ranks on the first page for 4 or 5 of the top keywords in her practice area, if not at the top spot. And I haven't touched it in about 3 or 4 years. I just followed what Google recommended when we set it up and created the kind of content they asked for.

Once I figure out a legit way to send links to her site, it'll be untouchable.

Steemit holds huge potential even just doing the basics of SEO simply because very few people do anything.

And if you understand how to write compelling copy, the sky's the limit.