Plural keywords and variations

plural, google, keyword

[erk01]

I have a page that lists "widgets" and so I have named the page "widgets". However, the search term that gets the most traffic, and therefore I am targeting, is "widget" – singular. As others in this forum have noted, Google looks at the plural differently than the singular. I rank #4 for "widgets", but #14 for "widget".

I'm considering changing the page to address the singular, since the traffic difference is large, but first I wanted to ask the gurus here if there is a better approach to addressing multiple -legitimate- variations.

One concept I am considering is to create pages using a “popular search terms” theme. Each of these pages would have IDENTICAL CONTENT, but use a different variation on the “widget” keyword/phrase; e.g.: “blue widgets”, “blue widget”, “bleu widgets”, “bleu widget”. The keyword would change for the page title, captions, anchors, etc., basically wherever the term is used.

I want to make sure I’m not doing something illegal by Google. I’m not too unhappy with my current placement and believe I can improve it a little without going this route. It’s just frustrating, because my pagerank is higher (5/10) than most above me (some with 0/10).

Thanks for any advice given.

[edited by: tedster at 7:04 pm (utc) on April 19, 2007]
[edit reason] fix formatting [/edit]

[erk01]

I've just been reading this thread: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3060898-2-30.htm.

There is much useful content there re: duplicate content, but mostly centered around content that is duplicate due to domain name/url issues, such as with "www" vs without "www". I'm wondering about the actual body content on different URLs. Using my proposed solution, I would say 95% of page content would be duplicated between each related "popular search terms" page, adding maybe 3 or 4 pages for each product group. However, this would be limited to a very small fraction of my total site.

[rekitty]

Easy one... don't make duplicate pages. Google will likely throw out all but the page with the most pagerank.

Instead try to naturally use both the singular and the plural in both the content and in anchor text pointing to the page.

[erk01]

Ok, so I'm going to ditch that idea.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:02 am (utc) on April 21, 2007]
[edit reason] Same question posted elsewhere [/edit]