A domain is ranking for a plural key word in SERPs on page 1 but for the singular not at all?
-
What could the reasons that a domain is ranking for the plural version of a key word on SERPs page 1 and for the singular version not at all? Google knows that both key words belong together, as in the SERPs for one version also the other version of the key word is being highlighted. If I search for the domain with the plural keyword it shows up on the first page in SERPs, but If I search for the same keyword as singular (in German it is just removing an “s”) I see the plural version highlighted many times but I cannot find my domain. What could be the reason for this behavior? penalties?
-
I am still working on these issue. In the past year we tried allot (onpage and offpage) to rank for the singular Keyword, but without much success. We are still on Page 3....
In the meantime i am quiet convinced that these is an transactional/informative issue. Which factors could Google use to understand weather a search or a website is more transaktional or informative?
Apart of mentioning Buy now, Shop, Buy now, Shop
Any Ideas?
-
It is true that people searching for general information are more using the plural of an word. And people who already know what they want might uses the singular as it is more specific.
Thanks for your Engagement!
-
Okay, my best guess (and that's all it's going to be at this point), is that different criteria are being applied to each word, or at least google's understanding of the word's emphasis is different.
Sprachreisen seems to be bringing up results that focus mainly on information about language courses
whereas
Sprachreise seems to be focusing mainly on information about "Studying Abroad" (which is exactly what google translate thinks sprachreise means but I believe changes the context considerably)
This would make the first search more transactional, so people looking for courses, and the second a more informational one, people after information about studying abroad.
Based on this I would say get some articles up about studying abroad in general, and see what happens.
Now for the Disclaimer:
Disclaimer I was working pretty much entirely through google translate so the above theory could be utter rubbish. I would probably still stick with Theo's theory because it's simpler and the way to fix it is exactly the same: build some content around the singular keyword promote it and see what happens.
Sorry that's not a huge help, but it's all I've got.
-
Hi, thanks for your engagement! I am rely looking for new input....
The querries are these two:
which mean "language travel"
-
Like Theo above says it could be the fact that google make a distinction between singular and plural (example for english courses and english course below).
If the change is more dramatic than those examples it may be something more exotic, it could be that the search criteria are different as I mentioned or even that google treats different languages differently.
I have to admit I now think it's much more likely to be what Theo said, but it could be mixture of factors. If you want to give me the keywords exactly I will take a look.
Of course my not understanding German beyond a very very basic level is not going to help the situation.
-
Both versions of the keyword are used on the Site more or less the same. The funny thing is that if you search for the singular term almost everywhere is the plural term is highlighted. So that for me it is obvious that google sees a high correlation between both terms.
-
The domains that appear in the SERPs are mostly the same but the order is different. Some domains from page 2 are on page one and vice versa. But i would say that there no domain that disappears that dramatically.
The funny thing is that if you search for the singular term almost everywhere is the plural term is highlighted. So that for me it is obvious that google sees a high correlation between both terms.
-
It seems less likely that it's the informational \ transactional search then, both of those terms I would say sound mainly transactional.
Is there much variation in the other sites that rank for that term? Or is it just your domain that disappears?
-
Hi, the English key words would be more or less "language course" and "language courses". In German we often put words together to one word.
-
I have found that in the past this is down to the two keywords triggering different search criteria. One is considered a transactional search, and the other is an informational search. So it may be that is what is happening here.
What would the keywords be in english (if you don't mind my asking)?
-
I don't think this is (in most cases) related to penalties.
My best guess would be exactly keyword optimization (somebody optimizing his page for 'book' rather than 'books' will most likely rank higher for 'book' than he ranks for 'books) and incoming anchor text.
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
-
Page drops from index completely
We have a page that is ranking organically at #1 but over the past couple of months the page has twice dropped from a search term entirely. There don't appear to be any issues with the page in Search Console and adding the page on https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url seems to fix the issue. The search term we're tracking that drops is in the URL for the page and is the h1 of the page. Here is a screenshot of the ranking over the past few months: https://jmp.sh/akvaKGF What could cause this to happen? There is nothing in search console that shows any problems with the page. The last time this happened the page completely dropped on all search terms and showed up again after submitting the url to google manually. This time it dropped on just one search term and reappeared the next day after manually submitting the page again. akvaKGF
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | russell_ms0 -
My rankings are not stable. Do I need to be worry about it
Hi, My client has an ecommerce website. He is ranking on top for many strong keywords. However with two prime keywords he is unstable. My client's business is in UK. Hence we are checking in Google UK. We are noticing that from 4rth Dec that our single keyword is unstable and home page at times ranks in top 10 and at times out of the picture. Please help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Devtechexpert0 -
Acquire domains to boost yours, how to redirect an acquired domain
What is the best way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Examples: glaspunt.nl -> glas.nl fietstassen.eu -> loodgieter.nl Any technical information how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
Rank drop ecommerce site
Hello, We're going to get an audit, but I would like to hear some ideas on what could cause our ranking drop. There's no warnings in GWT. We deleted 17 or so blogs (that had no backlinks pointing to these blogs and were simply for easy links) last summer thinking that they weren't white hat so we had to start eliminating them. At the same time, we eliminated a few sitewide paid links that were really strong. With all of this deletion, our keywords started to drop. For example, our main keyword went from first to third/fourth. With the deletions, our keywords dropped immediately a couple of spots, then with no more deletions, all of our keywords have been slowly dropping over the last seven months or so. Right now we are at the bottom of the first page for that same main keyword, and other keywords look similar. We have 70 linking root domains, of which: 15 are blogs with no backlinks that were created simply for the purpose of easy links. We didn't delete them all yet because of the immediate ranking drop when we deleted the last ones. One PR5 site has links to our home page scattered throughout it's lists of resources for people in different states in the US. It doesn't look like a standard paid link site, but it has many paid links in it's different pages. One PR4 site has our logo with another paid link logo at the bottom of one of it's pages. There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial. That's all the bad stuff. Other things that could be causing drop in rank - > Our bread crumbs are kind of messed up. We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu. We did this because we had categories that were exactly the same. So you'll drill down on a category page and you'll end up on a main category. To the average user, it seems perfectly fine. Our on-site SEO still has a few pages that repeat words in the titles and h1 tags several times (especially our #1 main keyword), titles similar to something like: running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes where a word is repeated 2 or 3 times. Also, there are a few pages that are more keyword stuffed than we would like in the content. Just a couple of paragraphs but 2 keywords are dispersed in them three times each. The keywords in this content is not in different variations, it's exactly the keyword. We've still got a few URLs that are keywords stuffed with like 3 different keywords. We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT. Our sitemap does not include any broken links. Google is confused about our branding it seems. I'm adding branding to the on-site SEO but right now Google often shows keywords as our branding when Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines. We don't link out to anyone. We have lots of content, almost no duplicate content, and some authoritative very comprehensive articles. Your thoughts on what to do to get our rankings back up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
My site www.sriindustries.com dropped to back page penguin 2.1
My website penguin 2.1 dropped back to page 5 and beyond, can you help me to come out from this ? My head is breaking, also I would like to know how to be on top for local business search (maps)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | synchronyinfo0 -
How The HELL Is This Site Ranking So Well In Google Places?
When I do a search for this site it ranks number 2 on Google just below the official federation of master builders website for the keyword phase "builders in london" this is the site http://bit.ly/Lypo8E which is a nasty looking blog which has nothing to do with builders and they don't even have an address anywhere on the site. The only thing I can see is that they are sharing there address with a lot of other businesses and all of the citations from those other businesses are causing them to rank higher on Google places, but surely Google can't be that stupid right?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730 -
Ranking in Multiple Geographic Locations
Hey Mozers, We are a Joomla Web Design firm located in Milwaukee Wisconsin, however, we serve clients all over the midwest (and US) (chicago, madison, minneapolis, etc) I'm curious what the best strategy for ranking in these new geographic areas? Originally I was thinking of creating geographic specific landing pages for each area, however, i'm scared it will hurt us with Google's recent penguin and panda 3.5 updates. Also, won't i need to link to these landing pages from our main website to get them indexed? What about creating mini websites on subdomains: (example) Chicago.SavvyPanda.com?? What are your ideas? Do you have clients who have successfully started ranking in multiple geographic cities/areas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Redirects/What to do with multi domains for the same company?
What is the correct way to "redirect" a domain if you have multi domain names for the same site? For example if a company has www.mysite.com www.mysite.info www.mysite.tv www.mysite+location.com Say my website lived at this location www.mysite.com would I then just forward the other domains to the same place? Do search engines penilize for this? Do search engines view this as duplicated content? Is it even worth having these domains and making the active? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christinarule0