Plural Keywords

[peteark]

Today I've been doing a fair bit of research and blogging on the subject of plural keywords.

Without doubt there's an unusual phenomenon based on the demographics of search engine users.

On Google UK

Building contractor is typed in 480 times

Whilst building contractors 1900

The problem lies with the implementation of plurals into a singular element, bearing in mind natural webpages (ones that puts a visitors needs well before those of search engines) are going to find the use of plurals tricky.

An example

If you owned a Guest House in Bristol you may want to target the term Bristol Guest Houses, the problem is there’s a semantic mis-match.

It’s all to do with the fact we receive multiple results for our queries, it makes us physiologically enter plurals even though we are searching for individual elements

An interesting subject, well I think so anyway, I guess the wife would disagree.

[morestar]

I think it's an interesting subject too! I have to deal with this a lot and I suppose most SEO copywriters do.

There is a way of getting the plural terms in, just like the way I do in my first signature link. I found that term (and one other) were the top searched for key-phrases so I tried my best to manage the plural version into the anchor text as much as I could.

I believe though, that a time will come that you'd rank for both the plural and singular key-phrases once you've truly established yourself as an authority in your field to a decent extent as for instance, If you are one of the best guest houses in Bristol, why shouldn't you rank higher for best guest house in Bristol and visa versa? I'm not saying there's a direct correlation but you can probably make one.

[peteark]

It would be nice to think that websites that have committed to the ethical path will eventually shine throwgh whilst others (the blog commenting brigade) are cast into the wilderness.

We can live in hope hey.

[morestar]

It would be nice to think that websites that have committed to the ethical path will eventually shine throwgh whilst others (the blog commenting brigade) are cast into the wilderness.

We can live in hope hey.

Well I personally don't see anything unethical about using the plural over the singular...what are you referring to?

[peteark]

I was refering to your comment

I believe though, that a time will come that you'd rank for both the plural and singular key-phrases once you've truly established yourself as an authority in your field

[Dreamrage]

I had a look at my webmaster tools and have actually noticed this. It's interesting to see that you can rank for a singular and plural keyword. Strangely enough, the plural sort of appeared out of its own from the content on the site. I did, however, work a few of the plural keywords into my campaign and have since been doing rather well. I don't see anything wrong with it either, and seeing that it just happened out of its own, why not implement it and see how it goes. I am almost always revising keywords from my research and swapping ones that don't perform as well out, and then replacing them with ones that might perform better.

[Sweet Tooth #3]

Interesting thread. This topic had me baffled when I was starting out and trying to figure how to word my page titles.

But I've found that most of the time, I rank about the same for the plural and singular (in Google).

All you need is some anchor text backlinks for both versions.

And if, for example, the page title has the singular version, I'll try to find to find a way to include the keyword's plural form in the first sentence and throughout the article.

Seems to work pretty well.

[jhannawin]

Yes, this one is tricky. The SEs do a fairly good job at overtly correcting our spelling/typing ability e.g. 'Did you mean ...', but they do nothing for overtly helping with semantic matching e.g. 'Did you want ...' . In the 'guest houses' example this could return 'Did you want results showing sites that list guest houses, or results that show specific guest house websites' ... in Bristol

You can see why they don't, and a significant number of users would just not understand (or care about) the difference.

I need a sit down now, my head hurts.

[enni]

I think most people would search using plural,The more effort should be directed toward optimizing the website for the search phrase involving the very plural keywords.

[peteark]

Hi Enni

It's one thing to say people should do this, that or the other but another to accomplish it

Let's go back to an early example

If we own a Guest House in Bristol and want to target the term 'Bristol Guest Houses' how can we do this naturally and effectively?

Of course we can discuss the 'collective' the whole guest house community but it's never going to work well simply because I own and wish to highlight one solitary venture.