Many of our SEO clients often ask us if Google and other SEs differentiate between singular and plural versions of keywords in search engine results. They also wonder if they target a singular keyword would their page show up for plural keyword searches as well.

To answer the questions, most major search engines (Google, Yahoo!) do consider the plural keyword to be different from the singular keyword. If you want to check a specific search engine type in the singular and plural version of the keyword in a search bar and see if the results produced are the same or different.

For example, Google uses stemming technology to return search results. Stemming finds alternate forms of a word, such as singular or plural variations. So if someone searches for “trade show model”, it will also match “trade show models” and “trade show modeling”. This means that if you create a page targeting the word “trade show model”, you’d also be targeting the word “trade show models.” However, you’ll still find that generally it is the exact term someone sought that gets preference. In other words, if you didn’t use the word “trade show model” but instead “trade show models”, you might come up in the listings but have a different rankings that you have for the singular form.

If both the singular and the plural form of a phrase get a lot of conversions and targeted traffic to your site, we usually recommend optimizing for both. Take for example our www.TradeShowModels.net website, we’ve optimized it to show up #1 in Google both for singular “Trade Show Model” and plural “Trade Show Models” phrases because these are the keywords that get the most conversions.

If you want more information about Google search visit their Web Search Help Center.

Some web developers may think coding for performance is a superfluous feature and they may often leave it for the last phase of development (if there is any extra time). When you begin building medium and large websites, the last thing you’d want is an angry phone call from your client because the site is not scaling well. And what would be even worse is to find out that the site is performing horribly, not because you need to upgrade your hosting, but rather because you were lazy in your coding and did not take the necessary steps to ensure the site runs as efficiently as possible and now you have to go back and recode your DAL and god knows what else!

The truth is, coding for performance should be built into the site from day one. Not only does it help make your clients happy but it also goes hand-in-hand with good coding practices.

Let’s take a simple example using the presentation layer of a website. On the front-end, I always do my utmost to use semantic HTML and CSS for my layouts. This makes my web pages load faster because most of the presentational markup has been stripped out and now the pages are smaller in file size. Once the user downloads the CSS file it’s cached so he only needs to download each new web page, which are much smaller in size than if I had a bunch of nested tables or other unnecessary presentation elements. For further proof, checkout the now famous and somewhat comical article “The problem with using tables”.

So I’ve stated why CSS is good for performance, but how does this coincide with my other point that coding for performance goes hand-in-hand with good coding practices? If you use CSS for layouts not only will your sites load faster, but you will have increased maintainability, better cross-browser compliance, better accessibility, and even have better Search Engine Optimization. This article was not intended to be entirely written about CSS, but I felt it was a great topic to reinforce my point.

For back-end coding, the steps you need to take to ensure good performance are numerous and most of which also enforce good coding practices. Here at Atomic Design, we generally do all of our back-end work in ASP.NET 2.0. Here is a great article that outlines the steps you need to take to ensure high performance when making ASP.NET 2.0 websites. And here is another informative article on Writing High-Performance Web Applications from MSDN.

In addition to the items mentioned in the above articles, there are many other steps that you can take, such as using asynchronous pages, only using https when necessary, using gzip compression, using css compression tools, and much, much more.

Now that Valentine’s Day is over give us the best, or the worst, Valentine’s Day marketing or promotional tie-in that you found? Provide link & example/screen shot/website.

I must say my heart went all a flutter when I heard the news. My sister and I used to talk about our dream concerts and if we could see anybody who would it be. Her choices were easy and attainable; Madonna (check), Back Street Boys (check), Prince (check)….

Mine; Led Zeppelin (Jimmy page with the Firm and Jason Bonham opening with Virginia Wolf was as close as I got), Jimmy Hendrix (nope) and leading the list the Police (nope). Now I have seen A LOT of concerts in my day including Sting 5 times (opening for the Grateful Dead in Buffalo, NY was interesting as was having Elton John join him at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta).

I missed the boat on The Police Though. I managed to catch Journey Frontiers Tour, Def Leppard, Pyromania and even saw the Kinks all around 1982-1984 ( I was 12-13 years old) thanks to friends parents taking us.

My parents went to NYC in 1983 and brought me home their fifth album Synchronicity. I loved it and The Police became my favorite band. I soon owned the entire discography just in time for the Police to break up. I eagerly awaited every Sting solo album and became a big fan of his.

I was always perturbed by rumors of petty differences and in-band fighting. Selfish me thought, “why can’t they put the differences a side and fulfill my concert wish and even record another album!”

Tomorrow I go online and hope I can secure pre-sale tickets. And not just any tickets - the best humanly possible! I will be competing with all of the ticket brokers and e-bay sellers drooling at the mouth on how much they can profit from this tour. In an ideal world true fans would have first dibs. All I am asking for as a fan is two tickets. God bless America and capitalism! Maybe I’ll buy two extras myself and resell them to cover my costs.

I waited nearly a quarter of a century. Hopefully the wait will be worth it!

Wish me luck!

Isn’t smart marketing meant to be subtle and noninvasive?

Marketing is supposed to cultivate attention and interest, not aggravation and disgust. Why then are these rules being ignored come Valentine’s Day?

Valentine’s day is a beautiful holiday that celebrates love and
relationship. Why does it have to be spoiled by substituting material things for love?

Men are being bombarded with messages from jewelers, florists, card and candy stores:

• “Get the woman in your life something she will really love. A diamond from our jewelry store”
• “Show her how much you love her with a diamond necklace”
• “This Valentine’s Day celebrate this journey with a diamond from our store”
• “He went to Jared”
• “Propose to your sweetheart live on News this Valentine’s Day”
• “Send Valentine’s Day Flowers”
• “This Valentine’s Day spice things up”

As a woman, I feel bad that men are being pressured year after year into buying expensive gifts to show their love and appreciation. Yes, all women LOVE receiving gifts, but its not the same when guys feel obligated to do so. American businesses create the hype for their products, putting pressure on people whether they are in a relationship or not.

If you don’t have a special one on Valentine’s Day, you are being
automatically excluded from the celebration. You feel insecure and isolated. Aren’t those days that we call “holidays” supposed to bring happiness and joy, not loneliness and sadness?!

Valentines Days stresses people out!

In this day and age where heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, do we really need to add more stress to our not so simple life.

Does bad marketing kill? Are we going overboard?