SEO – Singular or Plural?

Voila Media Group

January 3, 2011 0 Comment

This week I was asked, “Does it matter if search terms are singular or plural?” and I had to respond, “Good question!” After some searching, it turns out that, yes, it does matter – to an extent.

Some sources I came across said that in your SEO content (page copy, titles, meta-descriptions, and to a lesser degree, keywords), you should try to target both. ie. if your business sells cookies, you should try to use both “chocolate chip cookie” and “chocolate chip cookies” throughout your SEO content.

However, another source at yourseoplan.com takes a different approach and says that if there is a reason to use one over the other, do it. So, since people are a lot more likely to search “chocolate chip cookies” (who buys just one cookie?), you should focus on that. If it is the case that it doesn’t really make a difference either way, search engines typically will pick up both the singular and plural version in search results. Of course, if it is easy to use both versions in your page copy and SEO content, you should do that.

So, to summarize. If it makes sense to use a plural word or phrase over the singular – or visa versa – do it. If not, it’s not imperative that you incorporate both, but it’s not a bad idea to either, when convenient.