Title Tags: Does having the singular and plural version of the keyword hurt the ranking?

[jampaper]

I'm wondering if there is a duplication issue with having a singular AND plural version of a keyword in the Title Tag.

For example: Wood Desk - Wood Desks| Furniture Store

Would this help or hurt my ranking for this URL? I can’t find a concrete answer for this under Moz’s “Title Tag SEO Best Practices Page.”

Thanks for your help!

[irvingw]

Desk and Desks is good but wood twice is not   find strongest primary and secondary matches

Assuming the plural is more valuable than the singular, and wood is more valuable than wooden

<title>Buy Wood Desks | Wooden Desk Sets | Bob's Discount Furniture</title>

Assuming the singular is more valuable, and wooden is more valuable than wood

<title>Buy Wooden Desk Sets | Wood Desks | Bobs Discount Furniture</title>

[MikeRoberts]

In most cases Google is smart enough to understand that a page relevant for "Wood Desk" could or should show up in searches for "Wood Desks" and vice versa. As such, it's not really necessary to make sure that you shoehorn in all of the plurals and singulars of your core terms. Worry about it more from a Human standpoint. Making the title more human accessible will help with clickthroughs, visits, and so on. Forcing multiple variations of the same word into a title in order to attempt catching every variable will probably make people skip over you. And ultimately, getting the qualified traffic is what much of SEO is about.

[donford]

I don't know that anybody can give you a concrete answer. I can say that having a plural and non plural keyword will not outright cause any penalty as our website uses this strategy for some of our pages. These pages have been ranked as far back as 50+ and over the last year have found their way to top 10 results.

In your example the more daming issue would be the repetitive "Wood" in the title then the plural versions. When creating a title tag I find that it is very easy to get caught up in the keywords which is not good, you should focus on clearly and directly describing your page that is after all what the "Title" is for. Further harm can be done by focusing on just a couple keywords as you inadvertently discount long tail keywords, which can be as powerful as keywords you focus on. The best approach is to know your keywords, use them in the title and accurately title your page.

To expand on your example..

Wood Desks - Home Student Office Desk designs by | Furniture Store

This tile has both Wood Desk and Wood Desks as its first 2 keywords, and uses nearly all the remaining characters to include more information about what would be found on this page. I'm also not a fan of ending with Brand / Domain unless it is going to be heavily marketed.

Hope that helps,

[irvingw]

Singular and plural search results vary and are still treated differently and if that's what you want to rank for (which was his question) i would recommend it in both the title tag and also include both singular and plural in the body content a couple times of course.

I definitely agree though it needs to be reader friendly from a marketing perspective, and also since title tag is limited space, doing keyword research might help you uncover a secondary keyword phrase that might be more valuable than including a plural or singular secondary keyword phrase.

[jampaper]

Your example:

Wood Desks - Home Student Office Desk designs by | Furniture Store

You said that Wood Desk and Wood Desks are the first two keywords. Are you suggesting that because "Wood Desk" is within "Wood Desks", that Google counts both keywords?

[MikeRoberts]

True true. SERPs for a singular will not be 100% the same as SERPs for the plural in many cases but there are often overlaps. Keyword research will help in determination of which may be the better trafficked and/or more valuable term. Natural inclusion in the body can potentially make up for lack of inclusion in the title. Also, considering that Google will in some cases change your title and description to better suit a searcher's query for which you are also relevant, you can't rely too heavily on title optimization alone as a factor in your ranking though it is a viable signal.

[donford]

Basically yes, if you were to come up under the query "Wood Desk" google would highlight Wood Desks .