Despite Google's reported ability to add an "s" to keywords, most sites have a dramatically different ranking for the singular vs plural keywords at hand. So would it be better to get anchor text of "Widget Spiffy Widgets" or just "Spiffy Widgets"? Thoughts?
I'd be interested in responses to this as I have a similar decision to make regarding the anchor text for a new site I have to develop.
I always look which version is getting more searches and try to optimize for that version. That's because I think that anchors like "widget spiffy widgets" don't look good to the visitor.
My strategy is similar. I have not experienced google being very intelligent with plurals (or stemming). So, for maximum benefit, have two different pages. One with anchor text widget and the other widgets. That way you get traffic from both. At the same time, I think that all search engines will get increasingly smarter about this one, as they proceed further on the journey from keyword searches to relevance searches. Ajeet
Well, if you have *time* to optimize two different pages for the singular and the plural, I suppose you could. I would just see which one gets more searches and optimize for that one. You'll still end up ranking for both. I always thought this was a weird one (I rank #104 for sexy costume & #121 for sexy costumes), I hope that the search engines will start getting smarter about singular vs plural, since obviously if a searcher is searching for one, they are searching for the other.
Yes, smarter SE's would be nice. Of course if they get too smart then optimization will no longer matter. So we are probably best off with some degree of compromise...a "kinda sorta knows what it's doin" SE. On page optimization is one thing. But when it comes down to it, those off page factors like links are where the money are. And now we are talking about choices. In Summer's case, I'd bet that if you had the anchor text of "Costume Costumes" (assuming that sexy wasn't so critical) then you'd get the same advantage over time as if you were making half the links say "Costume" and the other half "Costumes". It gets more complicated with the factor of "sexy" though...throw that into the mix and "Costumes Sexy Costume" waters down the off-page value of sexy and you may actually see a drop for either Sexy Costumes or Sexy Costume. If there's no other easy way around it, the best way for doing a keyword phrase that can include a plural word is to actually work on either the singular or plural and once you have that positioned in the SERPS work on the other. Tedious but probably true. Like you say...someday, the SEs will realize "if a searcher is searching for one, they are searching for the other" since they are the same anyway.
After lots of testing we decided to definitely go for both, until such time as SE's can handle it. Pictures of Houses : Andalucian horses for sale