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.
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
-
Hi everyone - hope you are well.
I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page.
What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page.
Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
-
Hi Brett,
I've the same situation with a client. We focused on the singular and ranked higher with the plural.
Of course the optimization were done for the singular keyword.The reasons we found:
- CTR in serps,
- Search volume, lower in this case
- Several links with the plural keyword.
hope it helps.
-
Hi Brett,
Your confusion is understandable. "Button" and "buttons," for example, are so closely related that it seems strange that Google would identify those as two separate keywords. However, it is important to remember that Google search results aren't always based on a semantic understanding of the search, and Google can't always assume that a word modified with an s on the end always means the same thing as a word without an s on the end. Take the words "cosmetic" and "cosmetics," for example. So it has to treat plural and singular versions of a word as two separate keywords that rank differently based on competition for those keywords.
Here is an article that offers an opinion on how you should handle trying to rank for both the singular and plural form of a word - you may find it useful: http://www.business2community.com/seo/singular-plural-keywords-always-seo-0974028#DJv4kwHCfdUFBPG2.97
Hope this helped!
-
Hi Tymen,
I am using both at the moment and we are primarily focusing on the pural - yet we still rank highly without the 's'.
It's a pain, not to sure why this is happening!
Brett
-
Hi!
I have familiair situations. Do you use both in the content? I focus mailny on the plural since I hope people want to buy more but also the single word I use in the content. It helps me to at least get them both in top 5. In my internal linking I vary in the single and plural links to the page/product. So most important tp I can give you is to use both in the content.
Regards,
Tymen
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
-
Password Protected Page(s) Indexed
Hi, I am wondering if my website can get a penalty if some password protected pages are showing up when I search on google: site:www.example.com/sub-group/pass-word-protected-page That shows that my password protected page was indexed either before or after adding the password protection. I've seen people suggest no indexing the page. Is that the best method to take care of this? What if we are planning on pushing the page live later on? All of these pages have no title tag, meta description, image alt text, etc. Should I add them for each page? I am wondering what is the best step, especially if we are planning on pushing the page(s) live. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aua0 -
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
Ranking 2 pages on the same domain in the same SERP
I thought it was generally said that Google will favour 1 page per domain for a particular SERP, but I have seen examples where that is not the case (i.e. Same domain is ranking 2 different pages on the 1st page of the SERPs...) Are there any "tricks" to taking up 2 first page SERP positions, or am I mistaken that this doesn't always happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ullamalm0 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Website stuck on the second page
Hi there Can you please help me. I did some link building and worked with website last couple of months and rank got better but all keywords are on the second page, some of them are 11th and 12th. Is there anything I did wrong and google dont allow the website on the first page? Or should I just go on. It just looks strange keywords are on the second page for 2 weeks and not going to the first page for any single day. The website is quite old, around 10 years. Anyone knows what it is or where I can read about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fleetway0