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.
Title Tags: Does having the singular and plural version of the keyword hurt the ranking?
-
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!
-
Basically yes, if you were to come up under the query "Wood Desk" google would highlight Wood Desks .
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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,
-
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.
-
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>
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
-
Thoughts on adding "near me" to title tag for local SEO?
I want to lean out my title tags and will most likely be doing an A/B test. They currently have the "Near Me" modifier in there, which I believe Google can distinguish local SEO without it. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | imjonny1230 -
Am I accidentally Keyword Stuffing?
Hey Guys, So I updated some copy on my site recently and noticed that whatever slender rankings I had (often on page 😎 have completely disappeared. The copy was the only change I have made. Now I haven't intentionally keyword stuffed however I have noticed that there happens to be a lot keywords in there. For example on my PPC page I use the phrase PPC 16 times however it has just naturally fallen into the content as that is what I'm writing about. I'm wondering if there are maybe too many mentions here? 16 repeats of the word PPC and on the page there are 490 words. Does that feel like too much repetition or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks, Matt
On-Page Optimization | | MattStott40 -
Title tag length
Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and have just noticed the end of my title text has been cut off by Google in the serps results. Everything i have read tells me titles should be maximum of 70 characters, however, Google is only displaying 54. See below Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police... Nobody else on the page is showing more than 54 characters. Am i missing something obvious? Any and all help gratefully appreciated. Thanks Si
On-Page Optimization | | DaddySmurf0 -
Duplicate Title and Meta Description Tags in Shopify with this App
Hello. I'm finding that by adding the Ultra SEO app in Shopify, I now have duplicates of the Title tags and Meta Descriptions. It looks like it's pulling title tags from the Shop info, the product or page titles as well as the Title tag I add in Ultra SEO. The website is 1bigcookie.com. The duplicate meta descriptions are from the text I entered in the meta description field in Ultra SEO. I entered the canonical url code shopify specifies to help with duplicate content, but what about duplicate title and meta description tags on the same page?
On-Page Optimization | | mymochamoney0 -
Why I am ranking for irrelevant keywords
My website is e-commerce and used to rank for all industry related keywords like buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets in top10. And suddenly my website was hacked and to resolve this hacking issue i have re-write all my dynamic urls into static pages after that new pages are indexed and ranking well. But after few months i have notice few changes in keywords ranking going down. But suddenly after Google Algo (EMD/Panda) update on Sept 27 i lost all my positions. And then according to Google guidelines i have worked on over optimization and low quality pages. I have removed all tones of low quality pages from SERP and simultaneously worked on url re-write. But i have notice small percent of changes in keyword positions like when Google Algo (EMD/Panda) is rolled out i lost my keyword positions from 1st page to 200 page and after working on over optimization and low quality pages the keywords are came back to 100 pages. Recently i have notice that my web pages ranking for irrelevant keywords. For example, let's say i used to rank for home page for these keywords; buy widgets, cheap widgets, online widgets but now am ranking for different inner pages say (guide pages). Can any one suggest me whats wrong..
On-Page Optimization | | BipSum0 -
Need help with fluctuating ranking for a specific keyword
my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5. Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me? Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software But I am still very new at this. Thanks in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | dgruhin0 -
Is it better to include the secondary keyword or site name in a title tag?
When I add a site name to my title tag with long-tailed primary and secondary keywords the title tag is longer than 70 characters. I need to include all three parts, so what should I do? At 70 characters the site name is usually partially cut off. I do not want to get penalized by Google, but I need to include the site name to have consistency. I am using the format Primary Keyword-Secondary Keyword | Site name
On-Page Optimization | | lwilkins0