Lets presume I have a website about cats. For simplicity, I set my sole anchor tag and keyword to be 'cat'. Will queries for the plural 'cats' trigger my keyword, or will I have to target both the singular and plural version of the keyword? Thanks in advance.
Just so you know, there was a very easy way you could have tested this yourself... dog vs dogs... is the number one site the same in each case? -Michael
Michael, while I appreciate your response, you really didn't answer my question. I didn't ask which one ranked higher on the results. Syvee possibly answered my question, but to be honest, I don't understand what he/she said, so this question remains unanswered.
Ummmmm....... Hm. Well. Ok then. Sorry. Not sure how that was too unclear. Plural versus singular do not return the same results. It has nothing to do with which is higher, they simply are not the same. So, based on that, can you get by with targeting only one version? -Michael
I think the opposite is more correct. It's a more of a sematica question. If you set you anchor tag and keyword to be "cats" then keyword "cat" will trigger. About targeting you have to decide yourself, looking at the competition and "overture"
Michael, The problem was that your example (dog/dogs) was that we have no idea which keywords they were promoting, targetting, etc causing one site to appear on each search term. There were too many variables involved with doing an actual search engine test. This is why I was trying to break it down to something as simple as a single keyword anchor as opposed to any other seo tactics that might influence the search results.
Interesting that it would work the opposite way. Are you aware of any articles on the web that have gone into detail about this? Based upon your response, making my anchor tag 'persian cats' would result in hits on the following keywords: persian cat cats persian cat persian cats Is this assumption accurate?
Title :--persian cats ( definately make the title with plurals word ) Description:-- Be sure also use "cat" and "cats" in your Descriptions Meta kw === "persian, cat, cats, persian cat, persian cats" h ttp://yoursite.com/persiancat h ttp://yoursite.com/persian-cats hope now you understand me
Thanks Syvee, that was a bit clearer. For anchor tags from external links, would it be better to use 'persian cats' as well?
I didn't have questions on how to create a HREF anchor. I was asking if the anchor text should be plural as well.
Assumption is accurate! Google's algo is some type of artificial intelect. I think that making your anchor text "persian cats" would automaticly bring to the optimization of the other keywords that you mentioned. Example. I'm searching for "Samsung". If you have done optimization for "Samsung D600", then your will also have SERP results for "Samsung" keyword (not high though, depending on the compatition). So I think it's better to make your anchor plural rather "perian cat", and of course you should do some analyzes also . P.S. I don't know any articles. This is just a logical thinking based on the university classes
Gulliver, I appreciate your response. It wasn't what I was originally thinking, but it does make sense.
That was your question. The answer was no, that "cat" and "cats" were not the same keyword and would not be triggered by targeting a single keyword and that yes, if you wanted both, you would need to target both. -Michael
It's not the same keyword, but still I'm sure Google understand that website STILL refers to cat, or cats, however you want. G dedicats keywords to users. And if I'm a user and I'm searching for "cats", I think results with "cat" keyword, will still interest me! Yes, pher needs to target both if he wants to get same results for both, but targeting the plural one (this is what i think), will also pull up the "cat" keyword Welecome Wrote, what I thought
This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but I'd suggest using both the singular and plural in your anchor texts - one at a time, of course. It's generally a good idea to vary your anchor texts, and I typically use up to four variations for a given keyword phrase. So in your example, 'cat', 'cats', 'persian cat', and 'persian cats' could all be used as anchor texts. HTH, Sam
Btw, if you want to get an idea of which one to target, there are tools out there that will show you the split keywords and give you an idea of which is searched more. Also, this is the SEO forum, there is a seperate one for Google. While Google will give partial credit to variations of a keyword you optimize for, the other SE's do not. Both MSN and Yahoo are very specific about what they rank you for. -Michael
It depends on what is being searched for. But plural is always better because it covers both. Unless the plural is never searched for.
Well, that's somewhat disheartening. I would hate to have to clutter my links with variations of the same words. I did notice that Google seemed to be a bit more leniant. I ran a test on my own site (see sig) and it found both singular and plural versions of the word even when I referenced it one way. To be honest, I've focused most of my attention on Google and not Yahoo or MSN.