Should I optimise our products for Singlular and Plural?
-
I know this is an age old quesion, however i have read many posts that all have differing views. As a compnay we sell towels and bathrobes. All our products can be searched for in there singluar and plural, each getting in some cases unique traffic, however both would lead to somone looking to buy.
So the question in my case, if i am optimising pages for towels, should I also optimse title tags, meta descriptions and so on for the singluar as well? The luxury with most of our keyword phrases is that they can be incorperated nicely into descriptions in both plural and singluar.
-
So I am best of finding some phrases that are more targetd and going to pull in traffic with a higher conversion rate than wasting time on terms that as you say are going to near on impossible to rank for. Having said that top spot in the UK only has a DA of 43.
I think i'll focus on the terms that are more targeted rather than spending time optimising for keywords that are going to be tough to rank well for.
We do have a big update to teh site that going to give us functionality and something over the competition that will allow us to go after wholesale orders online which opens a massive door across many markets.
-
Presumably if I optimise for "buy towels" or "Bathroom Towels" There is still the possibility that i will rank well for towels/ towel I guess?
It's all relative. I define "ranking well" as appearing in the top 5 search results for a given keyword. For the most part, if you do not rank on the first page, you may as well not exist. There are exceptions. If you can attract 1% of the search volume for a term with a million searches per month, that is 10k hits which is a significant amount of traffic. You might gain that traffic with your position on page 2 of SERPs.
When I examine the results for "towel" and "towels" in Google.com, I see the Wiki result on the first page of both searches. The results are filled with very well known brands: target, macy's, amazon, home depot, bed bath and beyond, pottery barn, etc. The first result which does not have "towel" in the domain name that also does not have a DA of 8x+ is on the 3rd page. In order for you to reach the first page of SERPs you will frankly need to have a very well designed site, exceptional content, and earn links from quality sources.
-
OK, so looking at towel/ towels, towel is more aimed at information sources (wikipedia etc) so I am better to optimise for towels. Presumably if I optimise for "buy towels" or "Bathroom Towels" There is still the possibility that i will rank well for towels/ towel I guess?
-
In order to decide which form of the keyword is best, you need to perform keyword research. There are many factors involved.
Using Google's Keyword Tool you can gain a rough idea of the traffic for each keyword.
Towel = 1,500,000 monthly searches in Google.com US
Towels = 1,220,000
Bathrobe = 368,000
Bathrobes = 246,000
So the initial data indicates the singular versions would be best. But you need to go much further in your research. The next question is where would your optimized page appear in search results? It may be better to appear higher in SERPs for a result with lower traffic then the other way around.
With respect to your title tags, yes it is very important they are included in your optimization efforts. The meta description is not a ranking factor so your goal is to choose whatever text you feel will offer the best click-through-rate.
You should also consider a searcher's intent. A keyword such as "buy towels" is likely to have a much higher conversion rate then simply "towels".
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Crawling/indexing of near duplicate product pages
Hi, Hope someone can help me out here. This is the current situation: We sell stones/gravel/sand/pebbles etc. for gardens. I will take a type of pebbles and the corresponding pages/URL's to illustrate my question --> black beach pebbles. We have a 'top' product page for black beach pebbles on which you can find different types of quantities (differing from 20kg untill 1600 kg). There is not any search volume related to the different quantities The 'top' page does not link to the pages for the different quantities The content on the pages for the different quantities is not exactly the same (different price + slightly different content). But a lot of the content is the same. Current situation:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMAGARD
- Most pages for the different quantities do not have internal links (about 95%) But the sitemap does contain all of these pages. Because the sitemap contains all these URL's, google frequently crawls them (I checked the logfiles) and has indexed them. Problems: Google spends its time crawling irrelevant pages --> our entire website is not that big, so these quantity URL's kind of double the total number of URL's. Having url's in the sitemap that do not have an internal link is a problem on its own All these pages are indexed so all sorts of gravel/pebbles have near duplicates. My solution: remove these URL's from the sitemap --> that will probably stop Google from regularly crawling these pages Putting a canonical on the quantity pages pointing to the top-product page. --> that will hopefully remove the irrelevant (no search volume) near duplicates from the index My questions: To be able to see the canonical, google will need to crawl these pages. Will google still do that after removing them from the sitemap? Do you agree that these pages are near duplicates and that it is best to remove them from the index? A few of these quantity pages do have intenral links (a few procent of them) because of a sale campaign. So there will be some (not much) internal links pointing to non-canonical pages. Would that be a problem? Thanks a lot in advance for your help! Best!1 -
ECommerce SEO for product categories and sub-categories
Hello everyone, We run a Magento store, and I have a general question about SEO-eCommerce. We recently launched a new site where we've modified the menu navigation for product categories. So let's say in the past we had a main category called 'Jackets' in the top navigation bar, and once you were on the jackets page you had a few subcategories to choose from. On the new site, we reworked the navigation bar in order to get our customers there in fewer clicks. So right away in the top bar, the customer can click 'Casual Jackets', 'Leather Jackets' and 'Winter Jackets'. We no longer have an internal link to the parent category 'Jackets'. Now here's the question:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
-Do I 301 redirect 'jackets' to one of the sub-categories of my choosing?
or
-Do I keep the main category 'jackets' even though we don't actually link to it internally? I see pros and cons for both, and I'd like to proceed in the way that will be most beneficial from a rnakings point of view for all jackets categories. Thanks!0 -
Redirects & Authority when Updating Product Pages
Hi Quick question on SEO & product pages. We're changing suppliers, so discontinuing their range, adding new - but the products will be very similar - almost identical in some cases. I don't want to lose authority built up from current product pages, the only way to reuse these pages is to reuse SKUs - which we can't do. If I am redirecting these pages to new products which are similar, I know page authority will be passed - so is this the best option? Our links on the website will actually point to the final URL, rather than going through a redirect - if this is the case will it still pass authority? Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Why Is Google Indexing These Product Pages On Shopify?
How can we communicate to Google the exact product pages we'd like indexed on our site? We're an apparel company that uses Shopify as our ecommerce platform. Website is sportiqe.com. Currently, Google is indexing all types of different pages on our site. **Example of a product page we want indexed: ** Product Page: sportiqe.com/products/PRODUCT-TITLE (Like This) **Examples of product pages being indexed: ** sportiqe.myshopify.com/products/PRODUCT-TITLE sportiqe.com/collections/COLLECTION-NAME/products/PRODUCT-TITLE See attached for an example of how two different "Boston Celtics Grateful Dead" shirts are being indexed. Any suggestions? We've used both Shopify and Google Webmaster tools to set our preferred domain (sportiqe.com). We've also added this snippet of code to our site three months ago thinking that would do the trick... {% if template == 'product' %}{% if collection %} {% endif %}{% endif %} sKwNZOl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | farmiloe0 -
Best Strategy to display 8mg Images on Product Pages for Ecommerce
I have an ecommerce store that has a variety of images including some super high quality images that are 8 mg. This style of image could be completed for hundreds of products in the store. Does anyone have any tips on what I should be watching out for here? Is 8 mg too unusable?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeyJamo0 -
Looking for an open source way to host product reviews...
We currently use power reviews for our item reviews but want to move towards something that can be hosted internally and thus forgo the cost or power reviews and actually see user generated content play a role in our site. Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichealGooden0 -
How would you optimise a news website?
I have been asked for advice on how to optimise a news website whose keywords, almost by definition, change every day according to the articles being written. How would you, for example, do SEO for the NYtimes.com? Great content and subsequent links I'm sure take care of themselves. Just onsite then? If so.... what?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomasters0 -
From an SEO Standpoint, which is better for my product category URLs?
With our e-commerce store, we can customize the URL for the product categories, so we could have: http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords/ or http://www.storename.com/product-category-keywords.html From an SEO standpoint (or even from a "trying to get links" standpoint), which would be better to have? I feel like having a *.html category page would be easier for link building, but that's just my personal feelings. Side Note: Our product pages are: http://www.storename.com/product-name.html Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fenderseo0