Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I use bold for the first few sentences of a text?
-
I would like to know if anyone knew if the relevance of a page changes if I bold the first few sentences. Our journalist wants to bold the first few sentences in every article to make it easier to read, how does that affect SEO?
-
go for it, I agree with Stores, it will help rather then hinder.
I set up a test to see just how well bold helped keywords, the test were inconculsive, I suggest it has only mild benefit. i believe SEOMoz has shown the same.
What you suggest is quite natural, iwould tr5y to get the guts of the subject into that paragraph
-
Bold as a very few correlation with rankings. Therefore use bold naturally, as a way to those users who scan the page and don't read it word by word to understand exactly what the page is about (therefore bolding the main kw is surely justified) and intrigue them so to stop and read more campy the page and stay on it and on the site more time during its visit. Bold or enhance the call to actions.
-
i agree wit the sentiments above. Bolded keywords is said to be a best practice, but in moderation. if all the words are bolded, then the crawler must assume that no one word is more important than the next.
If you are looking for that bolded look, a simple
tag will help you achieve the same aesthetic.
hope that helps you, and good luck.
-
Google's algorithm is not known to us so we are left to guess. There could be some case studies but even so, the algorithm changes around 500 times per year so it is impossible to know for sure.
My best guess is, all forms of attention grabbing on a page such as bold and italics are put in a bucket which share the weighting bonus. If you have only a couple words on a page appear in bold, then all the weight would apply to those couple words. If you present the entire page in bold, then all terms would be treated equally.
My normal recommendation would be to use bold for the most important words, or the most relevant ones. If you feel the design of the page improves by using bold text on the first couple of sentences, consider changing the text color instead. I have seen some creative results in this regard but don't have any examples to share.
-
I would keep and _tags for specific keywords, sentences, quotes, etc. However, if it is for purely cosmetic reasons your editor wants to bold the first sentences, it should be an easy CSS hack that will help the visual aspects of the content be seen. _
Remember to incorporate best practices into all your code and remember how the content is being crawled.
-
Well written content introduces the main topic within the first few sentences, so should contain the most important keywords anyway. Emboldening those sentences will add a little weighting to their content so this should help your SEO rather than hinder it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is using a H1 tag in a logo image bad for SEO?
We have brand logos on certain pages that have H1 tags in them - the H1 text being the brand's name, as this is what we'd want the title of the page to be. The logos are at the top of the page instead of a written title. But is this the best option for SEO? Do search engines value H1 tags in images as highly as a standard H1 tag?Would it be better for SEO to add an alt tag to the logo and add a separate H1 tag on the page that's also the name of the brand?
On-Page Optimization | | DVLighting0 -
Using Schema markup for Feefo reviews
I am a little confused about whether or not it is ok to use Schema markup with reviews collected through Feefo. We use Feefo to collect reviews from our customers and these get displayed on our website. We get service ratings as well as product ratings through Feefo. My question is: Is it ok to use Schema markup for these? I would have thought they would fall under 3rd party reviews, but this article from the Feefo website seems to suggest that it would be ok to use markup in the way they recommend. Can anyone confirm how Google handles review markup like this? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
A charset attribute on a meta element found after the first 1024 bytes.
Can anybody help me with this error please... Error: A charset attribute on a meta element found after the first 1024 bytes https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsocialmotors.uk%2F I have no idea how to find or fix this issue, i have spoke to my theme dev and they say it is not a problem with the theme, so i do not know were to turn now. As you will see in the link above there are a couple of errors, i do not know how to fix them either 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Taylor170 -
How much text is recommended for a homepage?
I'm working with a client who is redesigning their site and the new design is very image heavy. Does anyone have any recommendations on the minimum amount of text the homepage should have so that it will rank (or at least not be penalized)? It's a site created by a known brand, but the site itself and URL are relatively new. Katherine
On-Page Optimization | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Best Way to Use Date in Title
Hi, I do most of the current copy for our blog which you can find here http://appointedd.com/blog/ I believe having a regular blog structure with a mix of irregular ad hoc posts to go in around these. So, for this blog, I write an article on "Beauty Industry News" every week. Now, I don't want to use the same title for each post, so I've peen butting in the date after each one i.e. "Beauty Industry News - 24/04/13". Is this best practice or is there a better way of naming regular posts? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
How long should anchor text be? Best practice for anchor text length?
site: http://www.cerritosnissan.com/index.htm On the bottom of this homepage there is an seo content area, basically right under where it says "orange county nissan" welcomes you. The internal links in this area are very long and I'm wondering why they would do this - is there any benefit to making anchor text longer? The longer the anchor text, the less each part of that anchor text passes link juice. For example, for a page about their reviews, the anchor text of the link is "See what Cerritos Nissan customers have to say about their experience at this great Orange County Nissan Dealership.". If I would have done this the anchor text would be "Cerritos Nissan Reviews" or just plain "reviews" as the anchor text. Why would they be using such long keywords as anchor text?
On-Page Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
0 -
Is there an SEO penalty for text that appears only in a pop-up box when you hover the mouse over an icon?
A client of mine wants to streamline the look of his web pages, taking some of the visible body copy and putting it into boxes that pop up when you hover the mouse over an icon. My understanding is that search engines will index this pop-up text. However, do they penalize pages that have text in pop-up boxes out of concern that those pages are spammy? In this case, the text and the page are perfectly legitimate e-commerce pages. Thanks for any insights you can offer.
On-Page Optimization | | jimmartin_zoho.com0