Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Plural vs singular keyword usage - on-page optimization
-
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?
-
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.
-
Nice Article, Eliathah
-
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.
-
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
-
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
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
-
Minor languages keyword research
Hello, I am in charge of doing a keyword research for several small countries in Europe, namely Hungary, Estonia and Latvia.
Keyword Research | | Lvet
I normally use the Keyword planner for Google Ads, but for Hungarian, Estonian and Latvian this tools seems to find no results for the keywords related to my websites. For example, in Hungarian the keyword "ajak toltoanyagok" ("lip fillers" in English) doesn't give any results (and yes, I am targeting my searches to Hungary and Hungarian). I have the same problems with Latvian and Estonian. Is there another tool that I could use and that could give me better results? Help! Cheers Luca rONwtZt0 -
Tool for wildcard keyword suggestions
Like others, I have also been oblivious to the options which were uncovered in this article, using stars or underscores to uncover more keywords suggestions. However, I am trying to find a way to avoid the manual labour. Did any of you find a successful tool that automatically adds all the possible combinations of these wildcards to give a comprehensive lists of suggestions? I am looking for a tool that also included my country (.nl).
Keyword Research | | Entertainment0 -
Keyword research tools
So I went to a panel a while back that said Wordtracker is basically useless. I'm not using it as an end-all, be-all, but more for insights and context. Do you agree with that statement? The hosting company provides a keyword research tool, so I wasn't sure how seriously to take it. Have you guys been using Bing for the search data previously provided by Google's Keyword Research Tool? Do you find that to be a viable resource? Thanks.
Keyword Research | | SSFCU0 -
Price Comparison Website And Keywords
I run a price comparison website for a small niche at http://cdkeyprices.com I am targeting keywords for the specific products I am comparing the price/merchants on. On a typical page I would have a price column, product name, the merchant and a buy button. Buy button is affiliate linked to the merchant. The product name in the product column is the name from the actual website I am tracking. As such, my keyword was appearing sometimes up the 30 times. I've took it down some months ago but was wondering if this was a bad move. I was concerned Google would think I was stuffing the keyword. I've only just gotten into SEO the past few months so was not able to see any changes. Should i put the product column back up or would it be considered over optimization?
Keyword Research | | MrPenguin0 -
Does combining keywords in the page title help or hurt you?
I am working on a site which sells elliptical equipment. I used Google Adwords to determine number of searches on the following keywords: Elliptical trainer – 3.,600 searches Elliptical machine – 14,800 searches Elliptical trainer machine - 22 searches I am currently optimizing “elliptical trainer” – but after seeing results above would also like to optimize “elliptical machine”. My question is: if I add “machine” to “elliptical trainer” will Google now only read “elliptical trainer machine” or will it read “elliptical machine” in addition to “elliptical trainer”. How do you know what word or “chunk” of words Google picks up?
Keyword Research | | ChristieC1 -
Keyword Conundrum...
I have 3 keywords that I am targeting. Assume for the time being that they are all equally competitive. Includes local exact match monthly searches: Managed IT Services - 3600 IT Managed Services - 720 Managed IT Support - 170 They are all exactly synonymous, not to mention other keywords such as IT Managed Support, Managed IT Service, IT Managed Service, Managed IT Service Provider, etc.. My current strategy is to target the top 3 all on one page. The problem then is the title tag: Managed IT Services | IT Managed Services | Managed IT Support Pretty spammy. I could build pages for all 3, but how would I incorporate them into the website since they are all synonyms. Can I get some recommendations on how to handle this? What would you use for a title tag? How would handle separate pages with synonymous content?
Keyword Research | | CsmBill0 -
Branded vs Generic keywords - is Google treating their rank equaly!?
Several times I have noticed that website receiving sort of a rankings drop penalty for certain wrongly built on-page strategies that involves keyword stuffing, wrong keyword density(too much) etc. The question is - how you guys think - is branded keywords receiving the same treatment from Google then generic ones? And here is why - for one popular brand I see that they ranking for their brand keyword very high(1th) but keyword density is awful - more then 10%. So, my guess is - if this keyword density you would apply for generic keyword you will end up nowhere to be found for it! Is that could be truth? Any experiments info about that? thanks and regards, Jungles
Keyword Research | | Jungles0 -
Keyword Research (dash or no dash)
I have a client that has been optimizing for "print and apply" for the past 5 months. Yesterday they decided it was more grammatically correct to use "print-and-apply." There question to me was "is this going to effect our SEO?" So... I checked the difficulty using the keyword analysis tool, both keywords had the same broad/exact adwords traffic as well as difficulty percentage. When reviewing the top 25 listings for each keyword it looks like the same sites rank in the SERPs between 1-8 and then after that it is completely different. So, is there a better keyword to target? Are these two keywords different enough to truly have separate search results?
Keyword Research | | kchandler
The top 8 results didn't even target "print-and-apply" in there content or title tags... Thanks for the input/discussion - Kyle0