Plural Keyword Phrases

[markvredeveld]

I notices that Google returns different results for keyword phrase searches that are singular and plural (s). What do you guys do about that? Do people search more with singular or plural terms? I noticed Overture makes no differentiation. Do you make separate pages, one for plural phrase and another for singular version? Would duplicating pages like this get you in trouble with Google?

[Cabbie]

Morning markvredeveld


I think if you make duplicate pages with singular and plural searches would get you banned from google (one they found it).
Personally my site is in a framed and non framed version so if I wanted the search term glasgow guest houses and glasgow guest house then I would put one of them in my framed section and the other in my Non framed section.
I have been on recently about a similar idea about spamming and I find that some people would think that glasgow guest houses - glasgow guest house would be a good idea for the title but personally I think google would construe this as spam.

I'm sure other people will put their bit in.
Oh by the way
If you type glasgow guest houses you would mainly get websites that list a lot of guest houses but if you typed glasgow guest house you would get websites mainly for a individual accommodation

Happy New Year!
[/b]

[minstrel]

I've also seen this difference for singular versus plural keyphrases, not only on Google but on other search engines as well.

One of my competitors started with a domain name containing a plural form of one of the search phrases, and then later added a page with the plural form as the pagename on the same site - basically, a thinly disguised doorway page. My first thought was that this was spamming.

Did it get the site penalized by Google? No.

Did it help the site at all in terms of either rankings in the search listings or Google PageRank? No.

Personally, I try to avoid using tricks - I'd rather be #15 for that search phrase and try to work my way up legitimately than get banned and have to not only start from scratch but convince Google or someone else to give me another chance if I promise to follow the rules this time.

Unless you are promoting some sort of get rich quick scheme where you don't expect or plan to be around in a couple of years anyway, I just don't think the potential penalty is worth the risk over the long run.

[janeth]

we are ranked good for both "custom web sites" and "custom web site" #1 and #2 on Goolge for the same web page.

If I was trying to get ranked for site and sites I would do it with incoming links more then with web site text.

Leave the site where it reads good and work on your links for the rest.

Just my two cents.

[Dragonsi]

I too have a similar problem, I rank well using "web design" but poor using "web designer(s)" (with or without the 's').

If I start labeling some pages with designers etc, will I get pinalised (spelling)?

[janeth]

Hi Dragonsi

And welcome you have a nice site.
You said you where ranked good for "web design"

For which search engine and what is your ranking?

[ronniethedodger]

Not to muddle the plural or no plural theme...but there are also the possessive forms of words to throw into the mix. Those words with an apostrophe-s.

So the word designer could possibly take on the plural form, designers, as well as the possessive form "designer's".

Google's parsing of sentences do make these distinctions I think. So if you are throwing a plural form of the word into link text, you should make sure that text is syntatically correct in the usage of the pluralized word.

For instance, this sentence would be very bad usage of the plural form of "design" -- "We are the expert in the field of web designs".

It gets even tougher with the possessive form. In my case, I have to deal with "burt's" as one of these toughies. You have seen this before.."Did you mean burt's" after you typed in "burts".

In this type of case...what can you do? I am banking on the lazy searcher who does not bother with the apostrophe. Although I do have linking text for the apostrophe too. Gotta cover all bases.

But another thing that Google does, is that sometimes it will think of "burt's" as just plain "burt". I rank very well, for burt...even though I do not have linking text with that word in it and I do not use it in my content (at least I don't think I have).

[Dragonsi]

Hi Dragonsi

And welcome you have a nice site.
You said you where ranked good for "web design"

For which search engine and what is your ranking?

Hi Janeth,

I rank well using "Pembrokeshire web design" (on Google) but nowhere to be seen using "pembrokeshire web designers" (last checked this last week).

I am going to go through the site and try to add different phrase as advised by Ronnie, I will track the changes over the coming week.

[janeth]

Hi Dragonsi

OK When you said "web design" I was thinking your where ranked for just "web design" and I was thinking that is a very good key word to be ranked for.

[Dragonsi]

That's ok, I think I still have a long way to go to get listed high just using "web design". I'm working on it but it must be a massively competitive category.

[minstrel]

You said you where ranked good for "web design" For which search engine and what is your ranking?
I rank well using "Pembrokeshire web design" (on Google) but nowhere to be seen using "pembrokeshire web designers" (last checked this last week).

I am going to go through the site and try to add different phrase as advised by Ronnie, I will track the changes over the coming week.
There are other combinations you should probably be looking at as well:

web design pembrokeshire
website design pembrokeshire
web page design pembrokeshire

...that sort of thing. For my site at least, I have found that the order of the words in the search phrase matters as much as singular vs. pluralization. It takes a while to figure out what people are entering but there's no point in putting mutli-hours and money into optimizinf for one or two phrases and missing out on half the people searching because you overlooked word sequence. The way I discovered this originally was by trial and error, basically entering different words and phrases and varying things and looking at what popped up on Google and other search engines. It takes a bit of time but is well worth it in the long run.

[Dragonsi]

On my home page, I use the title "Dragonsi Web Design Ltd - Pembrokeshire, west Wales Internet, ICT and graphic design services".

I am sure it is the 'Dragonsi Web Design' & 'Pembrokeshire' that are getting my rank using "Pembrokeshire web design", but do you think the title is too long? Should I shorten it and include the dropped words on another page title?

[ronniethedodger]

On my home page, I use the title "Dragonsi Web Design Ltd - Pembrokeshire, west Wales Internet, ICT and graphic design services".

I am sure it is the 'Dragonsi Web Design' & 'Pembrokeshire' that are getting my rank using "Pembrokeshire web design", but do you think the title is too long? Should I shorten it and include the dropped words on another page title?

I don't think it is too long. One thing you also have to remember is that there is more than one search engine out there. What is good for the Google, is not necessarily good for the gander.

Also. Which Google datacenter are you querying for your results. Google-UK ???

In my particular case, I am gettin hits from Googles Asian and UK datacenters on certain queries that normally do not place well on the USA datacenter. These datacenters do me no good to place in, because I deal in "hard goods" that need to be shipped....although we do have a few loyal UK customers who do pay that freight.

In your case though....a lot of your services are "soft goods" and do not have the burden of freight. So you more or less do not have any restrictions on where your Customer base is...it has no boundaries.

The differences in results between the USA and the UK may be due to a number of factors. Possibly there are regional filters on the url's...I don't know. It could be the way content is written.

What I really driving at is even though you chaps speak English over there, I still don't understand a lot of what you are saying half the time! ;0)

I meant that as a joke, but I am also serious too. We have different terminologies (ie: auto hood vs. bonnet), some words are spelled differently (ie: colour-color), you drop the word "the" sometimes like in the phrase "We are going to Hospital" (instead of "the Hospital"). All of this can have an effect on search results.

If you want to capture Customers outside of the UK, you may want to keep that in mind when you are doing some of your re-writes. Check in with the various datacenters on your results.

[Dragonsi]

Hi Ron,
Thanks for your comments and I like your sence of humour..

When you say datacentre's, how do you mean? When I search Google (for example) I'll just go to google.com, enter search phrase and 'search the web'. How do I know which data centre and how do I search different ones?