Dealing with spelling variations
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Hi, my site is a directory for restaurants seen on TV. The two most popular shows, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Man v. Food often are searched for by a number of different variations. Diners DriveIns Dives, Diners, Drive Ins Dives, Man v Food, man versus food, etc.
Should my site consistently use a single variation (the official one) or intentionally use multiple variations to cover various keywords? I'm pretty sure the answer is a single variation but figured it was worth asking.
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We deal with a similar issue. However, what makes it interestingly complex is that our branch and audience is B2B.
Besides being very important to know which variations has more traffic volume, it seems that a single/plural variation can have in the background different queries' needs or origins.
For example between "payment services" and "payment service", there seems to be no difference and of course as the previous mozers comment, Google is intelligent enough to present results regardless of the spelling.
However, "payment service" could be (and tends to be) a B2C query. Usually referring to a specific service, i.e. "jc penney payment service". That is of course not relevant for us.
In conclusion, I would recommend to also have a look at the content's type and context that the different variations trigger.
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I would err on the side of using the right name. Google and Bing will figure it out. And the grammar police won't arrest you. Trust me, they are annoying. Go for right, please.
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Although Google is smart enough to figure out synonyms in many cases, it's still good practice to mix up your keywords on your page with different variations. This is a better experience for the user as well, since the content will be less repetitive.
Look at the search volumes for the various keyword variations, and see which variations are being used the most. If there are a couple variations that get used a lot, it may make sense to create pages on your site which each focus on a single variation.
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