When the Plural has more traffic, but the singular makes much more sense. What to do?
-
Hey everyone! This is actually the first time I ever posted a question here on MOZ! Guess I was (still am) embarrassed by being an SEO Noob!
That being said, I really have to get some input on this matter and i was wondering if you guys might be able to help.
I'm optimizing a page for a wedding venue in Portugal. Currently, according to google trends the Plural - Venues for weddings, scores considerably better than the Singular, Venue for weddings(this was researched in Portuguese written terms of course). Despite this, i'm leaning towards an optimization for the Singular term, because the plural seems to un-natural to fit in the content, or title. I managed to fit the Plural in the description but i've read that it hasn't influenced rank directly for a while.
Currently my title tag reads: Venue for Weddings | Name of the Venue. I really can't find anyway that it makes sense to me in the Plural... and i feel like if i was a user, i would rather click on the singular term cause it just makes a lot more sense. But my opinion is most probably biased by the fact that i understand that using the plural term will be solemnly an SEO effort to rank higher for a term that has more average searches per month.
My question is: In the current state of search algorithms, will an optimization for the singular term, still get me some rank on the plural key phrase?
Let me know what you think about this please, and thank you in advance for your time.
Most Respectfully,
Martim Coutinho dos Santos
-
Consider creating a page on your site for both terms. Weddings are a big deal for people and ultimately, they are going to book a venue that they love and relate to. If you have a great venue, you shouldn't be afraid to list a few other venues (perhaps not your primary competitors) that are good alternatives. Perhaps you could even make a referral arrangement with them and earn some income from people who book their venues from your page.
- Your home page could target the singular, Wedding Venue term - and of course highlight your venue.
- An additional page would be created to highlight the plural, Venues for Weddings, and the content would focus on the Top Venues in your city.
It's a great chance for you to highlight what is special about your venue and deliver value to the searchers of either term.
-
I have stopped thinking about singular and plural. Stopped a couple years ago.
Now I just word my title tags like the average person talks, trying to say something that makes 'em click... and then deliver the best content possible when they land.
Title tags are still really important but google, I believe, will favor natural language and good content way over keyword stuffin' and optimizin'.
-
Ha, yeah. This job would be so easy if only clients weren't a factor. The ones that listen are always the ones that have more success.
Good luck convincing your client. Keep your cool, it can be frustrating when clients force you to let them shoot themselves in the foot. This is because once their foot is bleeding, they're going to blame you for the pain.
-
Thanks for the quick answer!
I really get what you're saying and share your opinion! I think the user's POV is always the best when it comes to this kind of decisions. Unfortunately, the client doesn't think the same cause someone told him that "Venues" is "da bomb" because it has the most searches per month.. And here in Portugal people still think that SEO is just supposed to get you on the first page, and it stops there. Clients don't want to know about traffic conversion, they just care if they rank higher than their "neighbor".. My guess would be that this is a common issue with clients in this industry, but again, I'm still an SEO Noob
Hopefully and with some patience and educating i can make him see what he really needs to be concerned about!
Once again, many thanks for taking the time to answer!
Respectfully,
Martim Santos
-
Imagine you are a user. If you're searching the singular, you're probably looking for a SERP with websites of single venue locations to browse through. If you were searching the plural, you're probably looking for websites that aggregate, list, rank or otherwise provide you with a predetermined group of venues. So, if you are a single venue trying to rank for "venues" you're always going to struggle against those sites that naturally use the plural.
With that said, yes, optimizing for a singular will usually give you some juice for the plural as well, but not as much. If you're starting from scratch, I would recommend going for the lower competition, more relevant key term first.
And remember, more traffic doesn't always mean more results. Targeting keywords without the proper searcher intent is going to get you traffic that doesn't convert.
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
-
Making a site mobile friendly
Hey Mozzers, Im having a go at making our site mobile friendly without enlisting the help of developers and incorporating additional costs. I am ok with most of it as its just CSS work bar the odd occasion when i need to reposition some elements within the code. However, i have found myself wanting to use display:none {} on many elements that are just not practical on a mobile site. Some pages may have to hide substantial content. Would this be considered an issue or will google just see it as me hiding impractical elements for a different sized screen. I have googled this question for the past hour and there is a whole bunch of conflicting advice. As always, Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ATP0 -
Why is my site crawled so much more in Bing then in Google?
I recently setup Cloudflare so I can see how much my site is being crawled. It looks like Bing is crawling me about 3 times as much as Google. Any ideas on why that would be or what I should check?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Redesigning client website and will be losing a lot of landing pages. How to avoid tanking search traffic?
We are working with a client who is changing the direction of the company's marketing efforts. The current site includes many (approx 100) pages for each partner they work with (each partner has its own page). The new site will be losing many of these and we want to be sure we don't destroy organic traffic/rankings in the process. These landing pages don't directly garner the most traffic but it will definitely be a big change in the size of the site. Any advice for how to best handle the redesign is appreciated, thanks!
Technical SEO | | KMofOutlier0 -
Received Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links , but no negative impact on ranking and traffic, What should i do next?
Hello, On May 19 , 2012 Google webmaster sent notification "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to " both sites haven't lost any ranking or traffic as yet. I am worried, Should i panic,what should i be doing , will it be going down anytime soon? how to naturally build links?
Technical SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
Technical SEO | | Archers0 -
Which is the best way of make text bold?
Is there a difference between , and font-weight: bold, in terms of SEO weighting? Does font size make a diffence, relative to the average font size of the page?
Technical SEO | | soltec0 -
SEO advice when making a mobile site
Hi there, I'm current working on a site that is optimized for SEO and doing quite well in the rankings. We have noticed a big increase in mobile users to the site (mainly iOS and Android), so we have no started planning a mobile site as well. Do you guys have any recommendations we should keep in mind before we get started? One thing I'm still not sure of is whether we should aim to preserve all urls and cloak the pages (show mobile version to iOS and Android, and desktop version to everyone else) OR make a separate site for the mobile version (mobile.domain.com)? Would either solution affect the other? Regards,
Technical SEO | | KennethDreyer
Kenneth0 -
Switching to another CMS with different permalink structure, how not to lose organic traffic and Google rankings? Urgent Please!
One of my customers is in online jewellery sales business and they are going to change their CMS; the problem is there is no co-relation between URL permalink structure of the current CMS and the new one. What should we do so that we don’t lose our current organic traffic (also Google rankings) coming from indexed URLs in Google due to permalink structure change ? Typical example: Current URL: http://www.abc.com/pirlanta-nedir,AR-3.html The new URL is going to look like this: http://www.abc.com/tek-tas-pirlanta-ar-4.html
Technical SEO | | merkal20050