Plural vs singular keyword usage - on-page optimization

[nathan_lg]

The on-page report card appears to include both plural and singular versions of keywords in reporting the keywords within the body, which results in a keyword stuffing warning.

My question is, is it truly keyword spamming to use over 15 instances of a keyword that is spread across plural and singular versions of the keyword? If keywords are lumped together this way by Google's algorithms, why do pages rank differently for singular and plural versions of the same keyword?

[eli.boda]

I guess it depends on the length of the content. Typically, 15 occurrences is excessive, even if it alternated between the singular and plural versions. I would suggest developing your content around keyword themes using many variants, not just the singular and plural versions.

here's a blog post i did on the subject of keyword theming - http://searchsolve.blogspot.com/2012/10/developing-content-around-keyword.html 

[JarnoNijzing]

Nathan,

15 repeats is a bit excessive but then again your question about why Google in ranking the terms differently is one I asked myself a couple of times now. I use singular and plural version of a word for one of my websites. The search volume for both is not the same. The plural version is a bit lower then the singular one.

Still if you optimize your page for the plural version the singular one should be taken into consideration because in my case the singular version of the word is part of the plural (minicamping and minicampings). The problem is in the fact that these words match for the biggest part.

I would suggest reducing the number of times the word(s) is/are repeated by at least 5 no matter how big the content is, unless it is completely natural off course. That all depends on the words you are using I guess.

Hope this helps

kind regards

Jarno

[irvingw]

replace about 10 of those with synonyms - less is better. make sure everything else lines up, file name, title tags, h1, internal anchor texts, etc.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Nice Article, Eliathah

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Great answers here.

Keep in mind the idea of "keyword stuffing" is a fluid concept. A well-written Wikipedia article may use the same keyword 60 times without being flagged for stuffing.

Context is key. If it makes sense to use your keywords multiple times than it's usually fine. The biggest violators that we usually see are in the title tag "Buy Cheap Florida Homes - Florida Home Finder - Your Best Florida Home Broker" - ouch!

As for plurals, Google will rank different pages differently based on what they perceive as searcher intent. I don't know of any hard and fast rules here - some plurals are considered synonymous with the singular version, while other times it can make a difference in ranking.