If you’re doing some research on
on-site SEO techniques, you’ll probably find many articles claiming that
putting keywords in bold (by using <B> and strong
<STRONG> HTML tags) and italic (<I> and <EM>
tags) has a positive impact on web pages’ rankings.
But is that true? Will you improve
your Google rankings by simply bolding targeted keywords?
Keep reading to know the answer of
these questions.
Definition of BOLD
/ STRONG and ITALIC/em tags?
There are 4 very common HTML
elements, that people use to style in bold or italic text
within HTML documents:
- <b> and <strong> display the
content in bold and
- <i> and <em> usually display
it in italic.
It’s very easy to apply any of those.
The text you want to change goes between the two tags:
<b>your text here</b>
<strong>your text here</strong>
In these two examples, the browser
will display the text in the same way – in bold.
That’s why many webmasters, who are
not HTML savvy, use these elements as substitutes (<b> instead of <strong>
or <strong> instead of <b>).
Difference between
<b> / <strong> and <i> / <em> tags
Although they have the same effect,
the HTML elements <b> and <strong> and <i> and <em> are
not exactly the same.
- <b> and <i> are used to define
bold and italic text, without any extra importance. Basically they are
telling the browser what the text should look like, without
emphasizing its content.
- <strong> and <em> are used
to define a semantic emphasis.
- <strong> defines bold text, with
added semantic “strong” importance.
- <em> defines emphasized text, with
added semantic importance.
In other words, these HTML elements
are telling us that the text is important.
<b> and <i> and defines
bold and italic text, but <strong> and <em> means that the
text is “important”.
W3C
- <b> and <i> will tell the browser
what the text should look like while
- <strong> and <em> indicate a semantic
emphasis, which can be conveyed by screen readers for people with
accessibility issues.
How Google treats
BOLD, STRONG, and Italic tags?
Google treats the <b>
<strong> tags and <em> and <i> tags in the same way in terms
of ranking and how pages are indexed.
In a video from 2006, Matt
Cutts said that there was no difference in how Google treats the <strong>
and the <b> tag when it came to ranking, scoring, or other search
factors.
In a more recent video, from the end
of 2013, he came back to the same question, saying that “Things might have
changed since 2006, but I really kind of doubt it”. He added the same is true
for or the <em> and <i> tags.
http://
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awto_wCeO
Are BOLD, STRONG,
and Italic tags important for SEO?
There’s no official confirmation that
Google uses these tags as ranking factors.
Therefore there’s been a lot of speculations on this subject: some SEOs will
advise you to use bold, others will tell you not to bother with it.
The truth is that we could only GUESS
if bold and italic have any effect on page rankings or not.
In their most recent study on the
search engine rankings factors, MOZ.com asked 120 leading search marketers to
rate how important they think that the use of bold and italic on keywords
was. Their answer was 2.8 out of 10 (1 meaning “No
importance” to 10 meaning “Very Important).
Therefore, the “keyword present in
bold, italic, em tag” didn’t even make it to the final list of the search engine rankings factors for
2013.
This suggests that the correlation
between the presence of bolded keywords on a web page and its rankings is even
lower than 0.02.
According to the same study, even important on-site SEO elements, such as the usage
of keywords in the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions have a positive correlation
of only 0.10 – 0.13.
And Search Metrics’ annual ranking
factors study doesn’t even analyze the usage of bold and italic.
For some reason, however, SEOmoz’
On-Page Grader is looking at the presence B and STRONG tags when grading how
well a web page is optimized:
The same stands for Yoorank and
many more web applications which analyze on-site SEO elements.
Why you should
still use bold and italic on your website
In my opinion, even IF the use of
bold and italic within pages has any impact on rankings, it is so minute, that
it’s better to spend your time on other things.
But this doesn’t mean that you should
completely neglect the usage of these HTML elements.
Think of your users and about the way
they consume your content. Normally visitors “scan” your content. So you should
use bold and italic tags to style your content in order to make it
easier to read and consume by your users. This improves their user
experience and they will easily engage with your content.
Best practices for
the usage of bold and italic tags
If I’m asked if there’s an official
best practice for the use of bold and italic, I would refer to
official HTML standards.
According to the official HTML 5
specification:
- headings should be denoted with the <h1>
to <h6> tags,
- emphasized text should be denoted with the <em> tag,
- important text should be denoted with the <strong> tag, and
- marked/highlighted text should use the <mark> tag.
The HTML 5 specification states that:
- The <b> and <i> tag should be used
as a LAST resort when no other tag is more appropriate.
- The <i> tag can be used to indicate a
technical term, a phrase from another language, a thought, or a ship name,
etc.
- The <b> tag can be used to bold text on
the page, but it’s recommended to use the CSS “font-weight” property to
set bold text.
For more information on the optional
and standard attributes of a B tag, you could check the HTML <b> tag page on the w3cschool website and
the W3 page on font style elements.
People tend to scan webpages instead
of reading every word. Bolding keywords and key phrases may not have an impact
on your page rankings but it will definitely help the readability and
consumption of your content. By styling the most relevant phrases and keywords
with bold and italic tags, you are helping the user to understand your content
faster, which will provide a better user experience and even reduce page bounce
rate.
