Plural vs singular

which ones are better? i understand that depends on the phrases, subject, etc. but can you say generally? in one of the threads someone said that the plurals are better because because search engines treats them the same, but if search engines treat them the same, there should not be difference at all.

please advise.

Fili

 

Are we talking about keyword optimization?

 

yes, yes we are.

 

Singular, people tend to look for things in plural more than singular:
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see what i mean.

 

I have always optimized separately for both singular and plural forms of keywords.

 

am i to understand you are creating 2 sets of landing pages?

 

this is the same cross road I am at also. I have always wondered if the plural covers the singular. Maybe not 100%. so if someone searchs for widget, wouldn't widgets at least get some consideration?

 

ohh i whant to know the unser to but ... i tend to agree with Zenkeshi seems that people look for plurar ... also in romania there are articulated words and unarticulated words let;s say ,,IRON'' articulated is ,,THE IRON'' but in romanian is all in one word iron= ,,fier'' and ,,fierul''= the iron. They probably have to be considerd as different keywords... i don;t know

 

fier doesn't have a singular or plural form because it's a neutral type

 

i was not speaking about plural and singular at that word i was speaking about articulating it or not

 

Plural is fine, I think its best to add the s

 

plural for me, surely if some one optimized for cats and some one searched for cat then the page would still be displayed

 

Plural will be the best option... I'll explain why...
lets take picnic as an example... people (even you) tend to search for "picnic SPOTS in your location" or "the best picnic SPOTS in your location" because you want to know all the possible picnic SPOTS (again plural) and then you'll decide one spot that suits the best for you... in this way plural gives you a variety of options and this targets visitors that have just started their search on picnic spots, which means they'll be surfing more till they find the best information on that topic (you can keep them on your website by adding subsequent content pages)

 

Plural is better, most of users search Plural keywords. you can target Plural keyword.

 

It depends on the keyword competition. If you are at a niche which does not have too much of competition, choose the plural keyword because you will rank well and also get traffic for the same. However, if it is a really competitive keyword, singular is better since you can rank higher.

However I am not still 100 percent sure about how Google treats singular vis-a-vis plural.

-Knewthis?

 

I would look up the search volume on Google's keyword tool (PM me if you need the link). This should verify which is being searched more often. If they are about equal, I would go with the one that has less competition. I think most people generally search for merchandise/items via singular terms based on what I've seen in the past for my own websites.

 

Basically need to look at search volume verse competition (calculation of KEI) to determine which one is more worth being focused on. For competition I would think you can at least check the first three search result pages to see how many competitors are out there already.

Does anyone have better tools or ideas for checking competition?