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.
Does Bolding Text Have Any Impact on SEO?
-
Someone told me it does but I thought that was old school way of thinking. Any thoughts?
-
Far as I know - no value at all for serps....but for searchers perhaps...depends on whether it might be a transactional query or a instructional one etc etc....
-
There are some pretty good resources right here on Moz Christopher:
- http://moz.com/blog/topic-modeling-semantic-connectivity-whiteboard-friday (whiteboard Friday)
- http://moz.com/blog/semantic-seo-questions (blog)
- http://moz.com/webinars/semantic-seo-for-the-people (webinar)
- http://www.slideshare.net/MatthewBrownPDX/strings-to-things-the-move-to-semantic-seo-mozcon-2013 (Mozcon slide presentation)
-
Hello Christopher,
Bolding in and of itself confers no technical SEO advantage. However, it does have a "soft" SEO impact in that it can make content more accessible and readable from a user perspective. This might make it more likely to be shared, linked to, or otherwise cited, improving your potential reach and therefore helping with positive ranking signals to Google.
Dry, basic text can make a reader bored and increase Bounce Rate.
However, well-cited, original content with proper emphasis on relevant topics and words can make all the difference when it comes to user reception.
See the difference? Google will too, over time.
Hope this helps!
Rob
-
I doubt it has direct impact on SEO but I have seen Amazon use all capitals in their product headers for the keywords. I don't know if this is dynamically generated but to give you an example it can be something like:
16oz. boxing 134895tp BOXING GLOVES for GIRLS
My guess is the reason they do this is to make the keywords stand out on the SERP and increase their CTR but if it had direct impact to SEO everyone would be bolding and caps-locking.
-
Good response Jamie. Any places to learn about the advanced topic modelling and semantic markup that you to refer to?
-
Hi
If it benefits the reader go for it!
If it doesn't i wouldn't bother!
-
I would not say it has massive impact, plus bolding keywords is a bit of an old school practice, but there is still some benefit / value I believe to using it, although does make content look unsightly if over used.
It's also worth mentioning that this tag **is redundant and has been for many years, you would need to use the following tag Keyword. Be careful to how much you use it and how perfect you make the SEO you do not want to get penalized for over optimisation. **
**Its best to think about this when writing content anyway
Focus content beyond basic keyword density and take into consideration advanced topic modelling - synonyms and close variants; keyword usage and intent; and semantic mark-up
Regards,**
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
-
When Google rewrites a title tag, do you get the SEO impact for the original version?
Let's say you're writing a homepage title tag like this: KEYWORD | BRAND and Google rewrites it as BRAND | KEYWORD From Moz and best practices, we believe that keywords closer to the beginning of a title tag may have more impact on search rankings. So, when Google rewrites the title tag, do you get the impact you would have made with the keyword being closer to the front? Or, does Google give you the impact you would have received with the keyword being at the end?
On-Page Optimization | | Kevin_P0 -
How Do SSL Certificates Affect On SEO?
Does really a SSL certificate affect on SEO? How? Why? According to my hosting provider (ganje.host), "https" improves SEO! As I know, It decreases speed. So how does it improve SEO when my speed is slower than before?
On-Page Optimization | | MirzaeeMustafa0 -
Text that appears when hovering over navigation tabs
Hi, I have a Wordpress website and want to delete or edit the text that appears when I hover over my navigation tabs. In my case, the text is always the same as the page title, but I don't know where to edit it separately. When I change the title of a page that is in the navigation, the text that appears changes too. So the general setting is that this text is the same as the page title. Does somebody have an idea where to edit this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Mat_C0 -
Best site Template, Structure, etc. for SEO
If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd030 -
Using Bold text for keywords
Hello I am updating an old e-commerce website of mine and many keywords are in bold - shall I remove the bold tag or keep them there? This is for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade. The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade. My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Best SEO Extension/Plugin for NOPCommerce Site?
Hi I am working for a client who is using NOPCommerce. It doesn't look like they have a SEO Plugin in - although you can add meta descriptions to Products - which works fine, the Product categories have SEO components too but do not seem to work and all 'other' content /CMS pages have no SEO components whatsoever. Does anyone know of a plugin which would resolve this? (PS never used NOPCommerce before!)
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0
