7 replies to this topic

[bobmeetin]

I'm working with a local business which offers a localized service, let's say a geographic zone of about 50 miles radius. Of course there is competition. The caveat to the service is that the key phrase has numerous reasonable variations in what it's known as, including some spelling variations as a single word, hyphenated words, space separated words and synonyms and of course pluralizations.

Google keyword tool confirmed this in about 6 pages of printed output, and I'd guess perhaps 20-25 common variations. Most of these top 20+ show an advertiser competition of 70% + (.7 on the spreadsheet).

We will have an FAQ page that lists many of the variations, but what I'm really wondering is with which keyword variation do you place the emphasis?

[Jill]

The one with the most searches?

[bobmeetin]

That's what I was leaning towards, in this case that would be the non-plural version, i.e. "funky widget" as opposed to "funky widgets". Not that I base life/death on any of these reports, but they both show equally as "1" looking at the spreadsheet with about 25% more local search volume for "funky widget" than its pluralized conspirator.

When it comes to singular vs. plural should I should I go with plural and assume that searches for the singular version will end up there as well, or will they lead to different results?

I am not doing adwords or PPC here, but if I were, would singular vs plural have more meaning?

Either way I plan to focus on two, perhaps three of the other hot key phrase options on this page.

[Jill]

Actually, if you're just talking about plurals and singulars, you should be targeting both. That's not the same as different spellings.

[bobmeetin]

Are you trying to make me think??? This is supposed to be Saturday.

This is a small business, will likely have 6 pages max. Setting up a specific page to target singular vs plural does not makes sense "to me", nor does developing separate pages to target the synonym phrases.

So let's say that I set up this particular page to target both singular and plural. For the other hot synonym phrases should I just work them into this page or what? No matter what you call the business, it's a single function with a lot of expressions that take you there.

[Jill]

Setting up a specific page to target singular vs plural does not makes sense "to me", nor does developing separate pages to target the synonym phrases.

Of course it doesn't. Why wouldn't you target them both (and others) all on the same page?

[bobmeetin]

Well then I must be "totally" missing the boat here. My understanding of developing content to support a page is to 1) Create a page title with 2-3 keyword phrases, 2) Set up the meta-description with a sentence or perhaps two that support the 2-3 keyword phrases and 3) Develop page content to support #1.

That sounds inconsistent what you just said, indubitably inconsistent.

[Jill]

These days, I often optimize pages for up to 5 phrases, especially if we're talking plurals and singulars. Even more, actually when dealing with those.

It is completely natural to be using both singular and plurals of a phrase on a page, I barely even consider them separate phrases anymore.