Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page

[Brett-S]

Hi everyone - hope you are well.

I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page.

What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page.

Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.

[GastonRiera]

Hi Brett,

I've the same situation with a client. We focused on the singular and ranked higher with the plural.
Of course the optimization were done for the singular keyword.

The reasons we found:

• CTR in serps,
• Search volume, lower in this case
• Several links with the plural keyword.

hope it helps.

[BlueCorona]

Hi Brett,

Your confusion is understandable. "Button" and "buttons," for example, are so closely related that it seems strange that Google would identify those as two separate keywords. However, it is important to remember that Google search results aren't always based on a semantic understanding of the search, and Google can't always assume that a word modified with an s on the end always means the same thing as a word without an s on the end. Take the words "cosmetic" and "cosmetics," for example. So it has to treat plural and singular versions of a word as two separate keywords that rank differently based on competition for those keywords.

Here is an article that offers an opinion on how you should handle trying to rank for both the singular and plural form of a word - you may find it useful: http://www.business2community.com/seo/singular-plural-keywords-always-seo-0974028#DJv4kwHCfdUFBPG2.97

Hope this helped!

[Brett-S]

Hi Tymen,

I am using both at the moment and we are primarily focusing on the pural - yet we still rank highly without the 's'.

It's a pain, not to sure why this is happening!

Brett

[Tymen]

Hi!

I have familiair situations. Do you use both in the content? I focus mailny on the plural since I hope people want to buy more but also the single word I use in the content. It helps me to at least get them both in top 5. In my internal linking I vary in the single and plural links to the page/product. So most important tp I can give you is to use both in the content.

Regards,

Tymen