How to know when do use singular vs plural in anchor text and on-page copy?
-
I'm building out a specific section of our site and I want to make sure I target it correctly.
Is there a rule of thumb when to know how to use "car" vs "cars"? (as an example)
Is there a specific way to research the right approach?
thank you!
-
A lot of results for singular/plural and synonyms are so similar as to be nearly identical for the first page or two, which is what really matters, and which is what Gregory Baka is referring to. You will notice a lot of times if you search for something you'll see synonyms and variants bolded in the description and title in the SERPs. That would be your signal that one is being treated as synonymous with (though not "identical to") the other.
In terms of singular vs plural I tend to include both variations naturally within descriptions and on-page copy. External links tend to contain both versions too unless you're buying the anchor text. I would think, based only on common sense and experience, and not any quantifiable study, that Google looks for a natural variation. If you have two different landing pages, one targeting singular and the other targeting plural, that would not only be wasting effort, money, link equity, etc... but it would seem very unnatural. If I were writing an algorithm I'd probably figure out a way to push such pages lower in the results unless other signals point to really high quality at the page and/or domain level.
ALL of this "common sense" stuff flies out the window though when any ambiguity of intent or results is involved. For example, with "cars" you could be talking about the animated movie, which is why you see IMDB, Disney and Wikipedia in the results. This disambiguation factor is why Google is pushing for semantic markup of the web, and is probably why topic modeling has become increasingly important (e.g. want to rank better for "cars" when the user intent is to find the animation, use words like "Pixar" and "Lightening Steve McQueen" in the copy).
As a rule of thumb, I tend to go with whatever sounds better and makes more sense to the user. For example, on a category page I might write "blue widgets" in the title, but I'd use "blue widget" on a single product page. From there I go with what the data says. Looking at Analytics a few months later I pay attention to traffic and keywords as a follow-up. If the "blue widgets" category page gets 80% of it's traffic from a #3 ranking for "blue widget" when it ranks #1 for "blue widgets" that tells me I should probably change the title to the singular version.
In the end I usually find I get the best results when I don't think too hard about it and just go with my gut when writing. I know that's not scientific or anything, but if it works it works.
-
No research. Just memory of doing searches with and without an S for my own keywords and noticing that the results were fairly similar.
I just checked garden and gardens - many of the page 1 results are the same.
Then I checked tool and tools - very different results because of the band "Tool"
Checking garden tool and garden tools takes it back to many similar page 1 results.
The original poster just asked for a Rule of Thumb. So perhaps the answer is "It depends on the keyword. Google it and see what happens."
-
I did a search for "car" vs "cars" and I see a drastically different number of results.
3.3B vs 1.5B, respectively.
Do you have any research to support your response? Just curious where you're getting your information from.
-
When the plural is made by just adding an S, then Google seems not to differentiate the singular or plural. You can verify it by opening two windows and searching for the term both with and without the S and seeing if the results are ranked differently.
But if the plural is a whole different word, like Goose and Geese or Mouse and Mice, then you will definitely have to makes a decision on which to use.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Anchor Text to Rank for a Keyword
Is it still possible to use anchor text to rank for a keyword that is not present on the landing page? Or are there any alternatives?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
Show parts of page A on page B & C?
Good afternoon,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
A quick question. I am working on a website which has a large page with different sections. Lets say: Page 1
SECTION A
SECTION B
SECTION C Now, they are adding a new area where they want to show only certain sections, so it would look like this: Page 2
SECTION A Page 3
SECTION C Page 4
SECTION D So my question is, would a rel='canonical' tag back to Page 1 be the correct way of preempting any duplicate content issues? I do not need Page 2-4 to even be indexed, it is just a matter of usability and giving the users what they are looking for without all the rest of the extra stuff. Gracias. Tesekürler. Salamat Ko. Thanks. (bonus thumbs up for anybody who knows which languages each of those are) 🙂0 -
I've seen and heard alot about city-specific landing pages for businesses with multiple locations, but what about city-specific landing pages for cities nearby that you aren't actually located in? Is it ok to create landing pages for nearby cities?
I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's? I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley2 -
How do I know what pages of my site is not inedexed by google ?
Hi I my Google webmaster tools under Crawl->sitemaps it shows 1117 pages submitted but 619 has been indexed. Is there any way I can fined which pages are not indexed and why? it has been like this for a while. I also have a manual action (partial) message. "Unnatural links to your site--impacts links" and under affects says "Some incoming links" is that the reason Google does not index some of my pages? Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
"No index" page still shows in search results and paginated pages shows page 2 in results
I have "no index, follow" on some pages, which I set 2 weeks ago. Today I see one of these pages showing in Google Search Results. I am using rel=next prev on pages, yet Page 2 of a string of pages showed up in results before Page 1. What could be the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Using href lang tag for multi-regional targeting on the same page
Hi, I have the site au.example.com and I ranked on google AustraliaI would like to be ranked also in Google New Zeland for the same page (au.example.com) Because they are geographically & culturally close Can I place href lang tag for both countries and present the same page The code should look like: OR should i have create a different page for New Zealand (for eample: http://au.example.com/EN-NZ) And the code will look like: What will work better or there is other solution? Hope I’m clear.. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda0 -
What are best practices for anchor text diversification in a post-penguin world?
There is growing concern for this topic as the best white-hat tactics generally allow you to choose your own anchor text (eg. guest posting and infographics)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaunchAStartup0