SEO and plurals
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 10:09 am
I've been thinking a bit about ways to get Google to show results for property pages, while avoiding the listing sites, OTAs and agencies. I don't often think like that because I believe that guests usually want to get their results formatted in the way that the listing sites show them, with pictures and summary and to have the ability to search by availability. However, quite a few of our bookings this year are through our own page which was found via a Google search. So, today, I'm thinking about ways to encourage this and possibly to make it easier.
For yonks, I've not had any concerns about putting plurals of the main relevant nouns: i.e. "cottages" in addition to the singular form throughout my HTML.
I hadn't given plurals much thought, to be honest. If I had thought about it, I probably would have sprinkled "cottages" more liberally throughout and especially in heading lines and meta-description, thinking that "cottages" is what most prospective guests would search for.
Today, I did a bit of digging and discovered a few things (most of which I should have known really):
So, where does that leave me? Should I avoid having "cottages" in my page? Or is it very unlikely that guests would either know how or bother to exclude the plural when searching?
For yonks, I've not had any concerns about putting plurals of the main relevant nouns: i.e. "cottages" in addition to the singular form throughout my HTML.
I hadn't given plurals much thought, to be honest. If I had thought about it, I probably would have sprinkled "cottages" more liberally throughout and especially in heading lines and meta-description, thinking that "cottages" is what most prospective guests would search for.
Today, I did a bit of digging and discovered a few things (most of which I should have known really):
- When your search term includes a noun, Google automatically returns results for both singular and plural forms.
If you put your singular noun in quotes, then Google will only find pages relevant for the singular (although the pages may also contain the plural).
If you search for: Argyll "cottage" -cottages, then your pedantic quest is rewarded by seeing pages that contain "cottage" but not "cottages".
So, where does that leave me? Should I avoid having "cottages" in my page? Or is it very unlikely that guests would either know how or bother to exclude the plural when searching?