Wild rank variations for plural v singular & same intent single keyword searches

[RattlingTram]

I have a veterinarian client who is dominating maps for search term "veterinarian", but considerably less well for "veterinarians", and #2 in their own geo (with little map presence beyond for "vet" and "vets".

The site homepage is optimised for all these terms, I've been trying to hit all variants of these terms wherever I can within GMB. Not finding much actionable advice elsewhere by way of tactics for combatting what really so far as I'm concerned should all be getting treated as identical intent searches by Google, yielding the same results. I could maybe get my head around it if the #1 ranked businesses were delivering better exact matches in their business names, but that really isn't the case. And these aren't businesses with brilliant reviews profiles outranking us.

The client is Clyde Veterinary Hospital in Victoria, Australia. I'd really relish any advanced tactics anyone may have for combatting this?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I wonder if part of this is related to the anchor text on some backlinks. Do they have more anchor text around the singular version? Are there any competitors that have super strong backlinks with the plural version for the anchor? That's the first thing I would be curious about.

 

[RattlingTram]

I wonder if part of this is related to the anchor text on some backlinks. Do they have more anchor text around the singular version? Are there any competitors that have super strong backlinks with the plural version for the anchor? That's the first thing I would be curious about.

Thanks, I appreciate that. Backlinks is probably an area I need to work on anyway, so I'll do some digging and that probably gives me some sort of actionable lever to pull, which is what I was really lacking. Cheers.