Why Singular and Plural Keywords Have Different Rankings in Google?

There is no denying that top rankings of a website in search engines play a major role in positioning a business among its competitors. The SEO process has constantly been helping website owners in getting top positions in search engine result pages. Keywords remain the main players in the entire process of Search Engine Optimization.

The world’s largest search engine – Google – always remains in the process of advancing its algorithms, search processes, and guidelines to ensure that its users get the most relevant searches and get helped in the best possible manner. Google has already started implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning into its core algorithm. As a result, it works instantly to process and learn from the queries posted in the search box.

This time, Google is thoroughly working to analyze and understand the user intent hidden behind the keywords. Though many words in the keywords remain the same, Google ranks singular and plural keywords differently. This process associated with singular and plural keywords produces different results among the SERPs.

Quite a large number of SEO professionals have found this very mind-boggling. Many SEO professionals advice their writers to place both plural and singular keywords in the content; however, it is better to pick only one kind of keyword – either singular or plural. The information should solely focus on it. Here, in this blog, we have brought to you an important piece of info that would be convenient to use and valuable to fetch in practice. Take a look:

Why Google Rank Singular and Plural Keywords in Different Positions:

Recently, Google’s John Muller discussed in a statement about the user intent in singular and plural keywords. His intention was not specific to any client site. And here’s what he said:

“We would see those queries as being different… And when we see them as being slightly different, then we might think that one or the other of these pages makes more sense to show.

So usually with singular and plural, we do recognize that they’re synonyms, more or less.

But we also recognize that maybe there’s something kind of unique to one of them or to the other one.

Such as, if you’re looking for a plural maybe you’re looking more for like a list or a comparison page or maybe a category page of different kinds of these items.

So that’s something where our systems try to take that into account and it can result in slightly different results being shown for one or the other.”

What Does Muller Really Mean in His Explanation?

He simply expressed that the algorithm will see both singular and plural keywords differently than people would. However, people would not be able to notice the difference between the two because they are quite identical. Google will see this minute change as a major component to work and fetch more precise results in front of the users.

According to him, showing more relevant results will make more sense and allow users to be specific to their requirements, once they come to know about the change. SEOs may be mistakenly working on either singular or plural keywords to target a great portion of the target audience. In the broadest sense, he wants SEO experts to work thoroughly on the user intent associated with the search queries. It can be unmatched across countless possible niches and topics.

For more clarity, let’s take an example that satisfies the theory of his statement. If you type ‘travel’ in the search box, you will have a list of mixed results including news, Q&A, top stories, and others. This entry will primarily define the object. However, if you type ‘travels’, many options of traveling agencies will appear giving you the opportunity to book your trip through one of them. Singular and Plural are not necessarily the synonyms here. Therefore, these terms are completely different elements consisting of different intent from the user side. This is the area the most prominent search engine is working for.

What Does it Really Mean for You?

The main purpose here is to be informed with your preferred search terms that can assist your business to reach the maximum number of potential customers. So, whenever they type the term in the search box, they find you in the search list. It is important to focus on grammatical forms of keywords that relate to your niche.

Spamming your website for these keywords for an intention to increase web ranking is completely useless. It will not work and waste your time. Do research on how people are trying to find services, products, and goods online. Choose one type and stick with it for good reasons.

Conclusion:

Finding the right balance takes time, enhanced level of fineness, and implementation of the latest SEO techniques. Therefore, considering partnering with an SEO expert consultant becomes the need of the hour. An expert SEO company can customize a successful search campaign to get you covered by the most searches from the intended audience.

SEO marketing without an experience and professional SEO organization can come up as a big setback for your business. We can help you to place your website on the top of the searches through the right practices and approaches. If you are looking to hire an SEO expert consultant with all these traits, feel free to contact us. We would love to hear from you.