Keywords for SEO: Does Capitalization Matter? Plural vs. Singular?
Question. #1 – For Meta Keywords
- Do you need to use the singular and the plural ie: bottle and bottles or just one?
- Should the key words be all lower case or the first letter capitalized?
- Is there a min/max for the number of keywords that should be used?
- We have over 400 variations of luggage tags, does google penalize us for using the keyword luggage tag for each item which has its own page?
#2 – How long does generally take to see the effects/rise in the rankings once we start this process?
Answer.
The devil, as they say, is “in the details.” Certainly so with SEO (hey that rhymes). First and foremost, when we are talking keywords > tags…META TAGS and SEO
The META KEYWORDS tag is ignored. It has ZERO impact on SEO. So it doesn’t matter what you do with it.
The TITLE tag is VERY important.
The META DESCRIPTION tag is a recommendation to Google / Bing as to how you’d like this page described on the search engine.
(Those three are the ONLY meta tags).
So, assuming we are talking TITLE / META DESCRIPTION, now we are focusing on how to put in Keywords and what matters.
- Capitalization has NO IMPACT. Does not matter. Although, I wouldn’t put my TITLES in ALL CAPS – the whole SHOUTING thing in terms of text. You don’t see many ALL CAPS in search results, so there might be an impact if you ALL CAP everything. Also, don’t use any crazy characters, emoji’s, etc. They have indicated that they punish the use of emojis in TITLE tags and META description tags.
- Singular / plural. This is the most interesting. Basically, Google looks for the BEST match. So if two pages are competing and one page uses the plural (e.g., Industrial FanS) and one just the singular (e.g., Industrial Fan) AND the search is for “industrial FanS” – then the best match wins (all other factors being equal). Generally speaking, all other factors are not equal, so it’s hard to see this effect. But the rule is the CLOSER you are to the search query the better off you are, and that includes pluralization. The big issue here is don’t miss synonyms (e.g., LAWYER vs. ATTORNEY – those are indeed different words to Google).
Focus Focus Focus!
Outside of the Home Page, which is very special, every other page on a site really does best if it optimizes for ONE and ONLY ONE phrase. So don’t have ONE page for Motorcycle Insurance AND Car Insurance, have TWO PAGES. That gets to your question min/max keywords to be used. LESS IS MORE. Better focused pages will outperform jumbled pages.
In terms of CONTENT, you do not want to overdo keyword density nor underdo it. I use a simply “eyeball it” rule. Write your content, do a CTRL+F for your keyword and look at the colors. If it’s overdone, you’ll see all yellow / read. If it’s underdone, not enough. Read it aloud. It should sound a little weird (heavy repetition) but not too weird. There is a sweet spot in terms of density. And of course you want to write in complete sentences, use good grammar, etc. (This is because of the Panda update, which penalizes badly written content).
How Long to See Impact
This is the great “it depends” answer. If you train Google to rapidly update your content, and you do some external link building, it can be very fast. A few days. If your site is stagnant, it can take a long, long time. As I teach in the class, it’s important to issue 4 blog posts per month, and 2 press releases… this “trains” Google to update your site frequently.
About Jason
Got a question? Click this link to or call . is founder and Senior SEO / Social Media Director of the . He teaches the SEO training classes for the group, and therefore provides most of the SEO tips for this blog. His goal with this blog is to provide an easy 'one-stop shop' for the busy marketer looking for tips, tricks, and secrets on how to get to the top of Google and Bing for free using proven SEO tactics. When not dreaming up SEO tips, Dr. McDonald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two dogs, a cat, four iguanas and twelve children (just kidding). Really you read down to the bio on this guy? Enjoy the blog.
