5 replies to this topic

[TimOtool]

I have a photography web site.
I try to cover variations of keywords so I use photographer, photography, photographers (all three words) in title tag.

Is that a good / bad practice?

This is what puzzled me.
I am searching website with the key words "______ photographer"
When I do that, I find my website in Google with both photographer AND photography in bold text.
Is that mean Google looks at photographer & photography as a same word?
If that's the case, I am repeating word, that's not recommended, right.
Should I use one word and discard the other?
If so, which word has more "power"?

Any advices would be appreciated.
Thank you very much.

[qwerty]

Use different keywords on different pages. Each page is an opportunity to rank for different searches. As far as seeing different forms of the word bolded in the SERP, keep in mind that the program that does the bolding is separate from the algorithm that determines relevance. In other words, Google first puts together the results and orders them, and then a separate program bolds certain words on the page, so it doesn't really mean anything (except that maybe the bolding program hiccupped) if you see that.

[Jill]

Is that mean Google looks at photographer & photography as a same word?

No, it doesn't necessarily mean that at all (but it could). It simply means that they consider them the same for bolding purposes.

[piskie]

Google employs word stemming.

It will give more weight to the exact word /words in the search query but MAY and only may return results for the closely related words from the same root. I have manged a Photographers sit for 3 years now and although I see Photograper, Photography and Photograph etc mixed in the SERPS, I have not been able to record enough stable and consistent results to come to any conclusion as to When and Why this happens.

[qwerty]

If you could show us whatever research you have on this it would help. I've never seen any indication from Google itself that they're using stemming. I just did a search on Matt Cutts' blog and the most relevant thing I could find was this comment (not by Matt himself) to a post made about a year ago about how people hope Google can improve:

I’d really like to see some stemming technology fall into place. But since that seems to be on of the last things Google has in mind for us, I’ll continue to search four different ways on one phrase.

[piskie]

Try choosing a word that is within or close to your market sector that also has a root word spawning several derivatives. Then search using this word in a 3 word search term including a geographic qualifier.

Look through the SERPS and see how many of the pages returned are more focused on other derivatives from the core word.

For an example a Google Search of Pages From the UK:
"wedding photographer london" Google pages from the UK search.
The top organic result is very much focussed on "Photography"

The Title contains Photography not Photographer.
The visible content shows Photography 6 times and Photographer only twice.
Photography apears in the Heading Tags but Photographer does not.

So although the word photographer was the core of the search term, the top page was something like 3 or 4 times MORE focused on the word Photographer.

I realise this example could be diferent for searches innitiated from outside the UK because of Googles Geographic functions, but this is the area that I look at/from so it is where I see these stemming effects.

You can derive your own similar exercise in your local Google and maybe you will see the same.