When inputting keywords for search engines, is it best to use singular or plural keywords or both? And if you use both, does it count against you? Everyones thoughts would be appreciated.

good question...i'd like to see the experts answer this as well.

currently i would say to go after both. my rankings differ for singular and plural of the same key-phrase.

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Actually it doesn't matter, but most of the cases, plural keywords will get more results. Google is smart enough to see singular and plural as the same.

Searching with plural, google will show also the singular keywords, that's why plural will get more results. While sometimes search "tutorial" will not show "tutorials". So you'd better use singular keywords in your title, description tags, because when people searching plural keywords, you also have the chance to show in SERPs.

For other search engines, I'm not sure.

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Yes it does matter. The results are different for single and plural searches. You must optimize for both.

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Thank you all for your responses. A follow up question....you have both addressed when plurals are created by adding a simple "S" to a word (i.e. Part vs. Parts). What happens if to make a word plural you have to add and "IES" (Party vs. Parties). Are search engines smart enough to pick up on this as well? I should have spelled out both scenarios more carefully and apologize.

Thank you

Search engines treat both as separate. So, its always better to optimize for both singular and plural.

Most of the times, the singular word will be more competitive than the plural word.

Example: Search for "phone" and "phones" in Google and see the difference in competition.

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I am agree with this idea.

Am I correct in assuming you're all referring to the keywords in the meta-tags?

yup. both is the best, since se treat both as separate. consider it using hyphens such dash or space, even miss-typed word. ex: email -> email, e mail, e-mail, emails, e mails, e-mails, emali, eamail, ameil, etc..