Another update on the baseball site and a question from a reader

Posted on July 3, 2007
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization |

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been a bit busy lately and I’m quietly flogging myself for not posting at least once a week - especially when there were great updates to be shared. The softball/baseball site has made more progress. In fact, it made page 1 Google at #5

woohoo_5.jpg

I’d like to push this to a top 3 listing.  Good progress on other terms also.

Softball bats - #12

Softball gear - #9

Baseball gloves - #23

Baseball bats - #32

Baseball gear - #18

Now all this leads me to a question I received recently:

“Hi, Love your blog. Thanks so much for sharing with us. We opened our site in December and it has been reassuring to see how the site you are tracking is progressing to see if we are making comparable progress.

Here is my question:

When you optimize a keyword should you optimize both the plural and singular version of the word? For simplicity sake using the example of handcrafted bracelet versus handcrafted bracelets. Would you optimize both on the same product or category page? Whether the terms are listed separately depends on the keyword service I use. Thanks for the advice. Joey”

Good question, Joey!

Now my answer might surprise you a bit. I don’t worry about optimizing for plural and singular forms of the same phrase - but let me explain why. In my experience, there is a different connotation in the visitor’s (potential customer’s) mind in using singular or plural phrases. When they use plural it tends to be when the search is more general and they want to see more than one item on the landing page they visit. Thus the phrase ‘baseball bats’ is far more popular than ‘baseball bat’.

However, when the person is narrowing down the search, the phrase will likely turn singular when they are fairly certain what they want. So a search pattern may start as:

baseball bats

Then get refined to:

Easton 2008 baseball bats

Then when they really know what they are looking for:

Easton 2008 BSN1 -3 Synergy Bat

So we tend to follow that kind of logic as we build our sites. Does that make sense?

Beyond the natural search patterns I find with Google that it doesn’t make a lot of difference in the search results. For example you will find PrimeTimeSportingGoods.com at #7 for softball glove. We didn’t try to get that one, it just happened. The same is true for positions held on softball bats and softball bat which are #12 and #13, respectively.

So I’d follow the pattern of logic I laid out above for which terms you’d like to rank for. On more general theme pages (like your home page and category pages) tend to go for plural versions of the terms unless you have tested with pay per click (PPC) and can prove to yourself that the singular term will get more traffic (typically its much lower). Then go for singular versions on product pages when the customer would be looking for something specific.

When getting links pointing to the general pages (home page and category pages), good practice is that you should be mixing up the anchor text (what the link pointing to your site says).  Use some singular versions once in a while but keep it low and you’ll also get they type of results we are getting on the softball/baseball site.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions or if I have not fully answered your question above to your satisfaction.

Nancy

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3 Comments so far
  1. Loren Woirhaye July 31, 2007 9:46 am

    Loving your stuff Nancy. I am watching your Video with Mike Long and its great to see a regular work-from-home entrepreneur giving hell to the big corporations.

  2. Nancy Andrews July 31, 2007 10:51 am

    Thanks Loren!

    Let me know what questions you have. We are going to unveil some really cool information soon (next 2 - 3 weeks) so stay tuned!

  3. Franck Silvestre August 20, 2007 6:46 am

    Hi Nancy,

    Awesome stuff. What you are teaching is almost exactly what I am doing to get high rankings on Google.

    I speak about it in my Seo Seduction Secrets ebook. Actually, I am not an Seo geek, but I tested many things.

    I got the first page for the keyword “affiliate marketing” very fast, and it’s easy to reproduct with other keywords when you know how.

    What is funny is that I don’t use any of the Seo tools out there… Except wordtracker sometimes.

    I’ll set up a blog to help people out there as well.

    I don’t promote ecommerce type sites like yours, however I found your golf site (and the baseball one) awesome.

    Hope to see you on my blog.

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