30 replies to this topic

[malhyp]

Hi there, does anyone know if there is any benefit in using the "S" in your words?

An example of this would be...

Lumber Supplier: If a user types Lumber Supplier well great it comes to you. But what if they type Lumber Suppliers, does google still give the same result?

Lumber Suppliers: If a user types Lumber Supplier, do I get a mention when it comes to results?

I am trying to figure out if i should or shouldnt include the "S" in some of my works when optimising.

Am i better off with or without?

Cheers
Mally

[piskie]

My opinion is Yes, because SE's will generally return both singular and plurals regardless of what is requested, but will position an exact match higher if all other factors are equal.

[Randy]

I agree with piskie. It's definitely helpful to use plurals, variations and synonyms where it makes sense to from the reader's perspective.

[shimlad]

yeah defo - agreed

[Jill]

If a user types Lumber Supplier well great it comes to you. But what if they type Lumber Suppliers, does google still give the same result?

Easy enough to check for yourself. Search the various forms of words and see what shows up and then decide if it's worth your while to optimize for the various forms or not.

[qwerty]

I think you'll find that if you mix plurals and singulars, your text is going to come out much more natural -- in other words, it would take an effort to use just one of the two on a given page. I'd say that alone is a good reason to use both.

[Jill]

Yes indeed, Qwerty! I can never understand why people think it's hard to write using both. It's actually harder not to!

[Janna]

Better if you would consider targeting singular and plural keywords.

[qwerty]

By using both, you are targeting both. Or are you suggesting one page about goat and another about goats?

[nethy]

There is a dominant form though. optimising for goat would probably use goats in the main text but doesn't have to in the title bar and heading.

[Raphael]

And besides, the major search engines also know how to spell, by which I mean they know that the plural of the word 'supply' is 'supplies' .. So you don't even have to worry about words whose plural is more complex than just tagging an 's' on the end. SE's are smart enough to figure that out for you.

[Ignoramus]

I’ve puzzled about this a lot. On our home page we include (to take your example) ‘Lumber Suppliers’ in the page title but not ‘Lumber Supplier’.

Both the singular and plural are contained in the home page text.

In Google, Yahoo, MSN, we get first page rankings for ‘Lumber Suppliers’. For ‘Lumber Supplier’ we are nowhere to be seen.

That seems to indicate the difference is important.

The same is true for PPC campaigns. Yahoo Search Marketing treats the singular and plural as the same. Google Adwords does not. I was surprised to find that just as many people search on the singular as on the plural.

Personally, if I were looking to buy (say) a lawn mower, I would put ‘lawn mowers’ in the search box, not ‘lawn mower’. It seems however that many people use the singular.

I have a theory about this that FWIW goes like this....

Many online searchers imagine themselves to be in a bricks and mortar shop. You wouldn’t say to the shop assistant ‘I want lawn mowers’ because you don’t – you’re looking for just one. You’d say ‘I want a lawn mower’.

Similarly, when you imagine a purchase, you have a mental image of one – ie. one lawn mower – not a row of them.

That might be complete tosh but I can’t think of another explanation.

[nethy]

Sometimes the singular is a lot less competitve then plural.
BTW it seems to make more difference if the plural (and even more so m/f forms) are complex to the rankings. Playing around with searching 'keywords' it seems like you get more results optimised for 'keyword' if the plural is simple.
Try: goose/geese/gander. Interestingly, the 'geese' SERP ranks wikipedia: 'goose' no 1. but I think this can be attributed to in text use of geese as much as google recognising synonyms. I have no doubt they recognise plurals/synonymns/gender but using the exact search term is still worth while, I think.

[ninjashoes]

Its a good way to target a keyword thats already been taken by a domain.

[Tiffany Hua]

By using both, you are targeting both. Or are you suggesting one page about goat and another about goats?

You mean for example:

"Title - Titles" is better than either "Title" or "Titles"?