General Advice or Strategies on optimizing Non-Plural and Plural

[Antony_Towle]

Moz,

I was just looking for any insights, advice, personal experiences in optimization for keywords that have Non Plural and Plural variants,

Basically from my keyword and traffic research i have gathered the majority of the search traffic i am looking to gain is coming through the singular spelling of the keyword i am currently optimizing and updating our page for,

From experience with this we have always ranked for the general non plural quantity page and brought traffic from both,

My Example : Our lollipops page which has meta information targeted towards 'Lollipops' rather than the singular 'Lollipop' but links to Singular information pages that are targeting the singular word 'Lollipop'

This way seemed to make sense as it wouldn't be good for user experience to have titles and headers on a page listing multiple products as a single instance, the content of the page would mostly reflect this targeting also,

To make things worse the page language and content is in German where their seems to be many ways of saying the same word from my understanding,

Am i doing the right thing in not sacrificing my user experience to target the singular version of the word ?

Just some advice please? Apologies i struggled to get my question across well,

Thanks

James

[HashtagHustler]

James,

Google is smart. Very smart. I would wager that Google is able to identify the difference between the usage of word in plural form, rather than a separate word all together.

When was the last time you searched for one word? People don't use Google/Yahoo/Bing for one or 2 word searches anymore, so my immediate suggestion is optimize for which ever term makes the most sense for the phrase you are optimizing for.

Use the keyword tools. Are people searching for "Green watermelon lollipop" or "cheap, bulk, lollipops" and then optimize from there. As far as it being an other language, you will just have to find out whats the most common term.

If I start a website that sells glasses I'm not gonna call it SpectacleShop.com, unless I want to target the geriatric community. Regardless, find what the most common term for lollipop is, and then optimize for the phrase that works for what you are selling. For what people are searching. Google is in the business of providing information. You need to make it as easy as possible for Google to provide YOUR information.

Also this is a good Moz thread on this same topic http://moz.com/community/q/singular-vs-plural-seo

Hope this helps!

[RobertFisher]

I mostly disagree with "People don't use Google/Yahoo/Bing for one or 2 word searches anymore..."

I think it is very dependent on the search and can show data to prove it. Take a term like plumber or smithville plumber; people do not search for toilet clogged plumber in Smithville. They do search for the plumber, plumber smithville, or smithville plumber. NOTE: we are talking not every single human in Smithville but 80% plus.

Also, I do not think it really addresses the plurals issue.

Best

[RobertFisher]

James,

It seems that simplified your question is this: If I have searchers looking for the singular and the plural of the same term, can I have a meta description that is singular or plural instead of having two pages with separate meta descriptions. You are trying to avoid duplicate content, additional work, etc.

I can tell you that we rarely (there are no absolutes to this) have a singular and a plural page. Whether products like electronic cigarette or services like plumbers, electricians, etc. This arrangement works fine for us.

Now, you added German to the mix and that is wholly a different topic. It has been years and years since Herr Knipper was teaching me Deutsch and throwing erasers at me daily. You have to be very careful and you may (if you are not fluent) want to employ a search firm that has that specific expertise. I would not take on a site in German, Swedish, Spanish, etc. unless I had that expertise on board or through a consultant. Yes, we do international sites.

Hope this helps,

Robert

[HashtagHustler]

Touche...... Robert..... Touche.....

To address my point more thoroughly, when people are searching for something and include a geo-location, I almost consider that a separate metric. It is adding a very specific term to the search engine then restricts to a location. I don't think most people utilize their browsers capability to it's full potential, and most people don't realize that you could just search for plumber and most likely Google is going to determine the best results for your area. (I could be completely wrong on all of this by the way).

When I look for a plumber in Los Angeles I usually search for "Plumber Who Has The Best Plumbers Crack, Los Angeles, Ca" You don't? I kid. I completely agree with you in this regard. If I am looking for a store/service/restaurant in a specific location then yes I would agree.

In a general sense, if I was just searching for something, coffee, lollypops, turtles, I would never search for something in such a general sense. Now unfortunately I often have to come to terms with the fact that just because I do something, doesn't mean everybody else does, however, even my mother tells me she types full sentences into Google when she searches.

Now I know you are sitting there asking yourself how this all relates to plurals? The point I was trying to make originally was that once the phrase is determined to be most beneficial for SEO purposes, optimize from there. I would bet that regardless there will be enough times where both words have to be used just to make it grammatically correct.

At the end of the day the Lollipop vs Lollipops will lead you to the same place, much like your statement below. Both Lollipop & Lollipops have been used 5 times (well 6 now) in this thread. They both seem pretty optimized to me. I mean, this page alone will probably be #1 on Google for Lollipop & Lollipops! (7)

Regardless I agree with what Robert said below. Robert has drastically more experience than I do, I would defer to what he said in a heartbeat!

Thanks!

Lollipop (8/7)

[Antony_Towle]

Thank you both for the feedback,

Yes, I am not looking to have two pages correct,

The theme and topic of the page is currently targeting the plural variant, and i feel this is the best way for it with how our site is laid out,

However i am saying it would be possible for me to change how the content is written to accommodate the singular variant of the word (Where more search traffic is)  however i don't think this would be the right thing to do,

If i stick to my guns and the content and page is targeted towards plural, Google would still look after me for ranking for both variants,

I content and translation support from a colleague in Germany, and have as long as it takes

Thanks

James