Single v. Plural Keywords

Do I need both?

[Small Website Guy]

A certain keyword appears in the plural form several times in my page (including the title). Most of its occurrences on the page occur in the text part of an <a> tag.

When I did a Google search for that keyword in the plural form, plus another word that appeared on one of my pages, voila! I showed up on the very first Google results page. (I was quite shocked, I just put the site up last week, and the Google toolbar says it has a PageRank of 0).

I did the same search but used the singular version of the keyword instead of the plural. The same page is nowhere to be seen in the Google listings. (The keyword, in its singular form, only appears in the keywords meta tag, it's not visible on the page.)

So the question is, should I also add this particular keyword in its singular form (also inside an <a> tag) all over my page? I could do that easily enough.

How many times on the page is too many? If they keyword appeared 20 times in the singular, and another 20 times in the plural, would Google demote my page because it has that word appearing too many times?

[DerekH]

Yes, you need both singular and plural keywords to figure well in google for either search. As far as I can see from my own sites, the page title has a particularly large influence on the ranking. But it may not make sense to load the title up with what looks like a string of keywords - after all, Joe Public will be looking at the title in the google SERPS and deciding whether to visit your site at all or not. A site listed as "Widget, Widgets, get your Widget or Widget here" can't help but look spammy.

What I have done is optimise two different pages, one for the singular and one for the plural. Simply titling the page differently and then writing in either the singular or the plural can generate two pages that are definitely not duplicates, and are definitely geared to single or multiple quantities.

And the visitor sees a page that answers his query - and that matters the most.
DerekH

[Small Website Guy]

Yep, I guess Google thinks the single and plural are two different words. (Google isn't that smart, is it?)

So I added the singular all over the page now as well.

It's silly what we have to do to get Google to like our pages.

[netguy]

Small Website Guy, DerekH is of course correct to handle both singular and plural but emphasize the better of the two for your index page.

For example, a cross-section of dozens of our sites, it is about 2-to-1 plural for searches. Obviously in our case, plural is added more weight in most of our sites. (In TITLE, <h1>, etc).

Think through how a typical user would search for your keyword/phrase. For example, fewer would search for 'airline ticket' or 'computer'... they are typically looking for airline tickets or computers.

If you are lucky enough to sell scissors or pants - you're on easy street!
;)

[martinibuster]

It's only worth doing if people actually search on that keyword phrase. If your one week old site scored so well for a particular phrase, I suspect the reasons may very likely be:

1- No other sites are optimized for that phrase
2- No searchers ever search on that phrase
3- It's likely a useless phrase in terms of generating traffic

I had a potential client whose SEO Firm sent him emails congratulating themselves on the dozen keyword phrases that they were number one for across several search engines.

I dug around and every one of those keyword phrases were useless in terms of generating traffic. The potential client had been scammed.

Single v. Plural Keywords
Do I need both?

Answer: Only if searchers are searching with both AND if the keyword phrases are actual phrases being used by significant numbers of searchers (real-world keyword phrases).

[willybfriendly]

On Saturday morning I noted that a site that has always done well on the singular single key word, but was in the basement for the plural single keyword was suddenly in the top ten for the plural single keyword.

Meanwhile, I had moved up 20 places in the SERPS for the singular single keyword, while getting bumped down a spot by this upstart for the plural single keyword.

By Sunday morning all was back to pretty much as it had been. I had moved up two spots for the plural single keyword, the upstart was back in the basement, and I had lost about ten spots on the singular single keyword.

Part of the mini-dance? Are they playing with stemming?

(I had posted a thread on this Saturday morning, but with pre-screening it did not make it onto the boards until all had gone back to normal.)

WBF

[Small Website Guy]

martinibuster

The keyword is a very useful keyword that people will be searching for.

But my site only came up on top with that particular secondary word (but first of 4130 results). Using a more general secondary word that people would probably be searching for, and my site was nowhere to be seen in the first 20 pages.

Alas, I guess I need a higher PageRank.