Is bolding keywords spammy?
-
It used to work for me on some sites - but maybe it's considered spammy these days?
Any feedback appreciated.
-
I think it might be possible to get penalty from bolding. I started to appear/disappear yesterday with my both main keywords on homepage. It kept doing that every few mins until today, disappeared and not any signals to come back. Both keywords was bolded in the first paragraph. Keyword density is ok.
My backlink anchors are fine and i don't think it is because of them. Still, made some moves and changed exact match keywords to my domain/url ones on some websites.
Homepage is still ranking for its other keywords, where is also those main keywords inlcuded as a long tail ones. So everything else seems to be good at the moment. I wonder if i manage to come back soon.. Any thought?
-
I occasionally use rather to highlight a phrase or a word, I don't think it has much influence on SEO, I would never simply bold keywords for SEO sake.. If it's really that important I'll make it a heading and give it a
****to
tags, which will factor much better.****
-
I beleive it is an easy factor for google to take into account when looking at a page for SEO over optimization so I don't do it because I think there is no benefit and it looks bad to the user in most cases.
-
I agree with Jackson on this one. If it makes sense and provides value to bold a keyword phrase, I see no reason why you shouldn't do it. I often bold phrases I want to drive home in the reader's mind.
But if it is really just to highlight keywords and for "SEO" then, yeah, it will probably look spammy.
-
I agree with Chris - it's definitely old school and can look a little spammy, especially if it is overused or calls attention to a somewhat unnatural use of a keyword.
That being said, I don't think bolding a keyword will incur a penalty from Google. If emphasizing the keyword provides some kind of value to a user, than you should definitely consider using it.
-
Good point Chris... I know, old school - refreshing my skills!
Going to remove the boldening, just needed to know if it could be causing a penalty or not.
thanks,!
-
It used to be considered a very, very minor factor and though I don't believe it is algorithmically spammy today, I do think it looks spammy and old school. My feeling is that people now get the impression they've been or are being marketed to when they land on a page that has the keyword emboldened.
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
-
Secondary related keywords
Hello, Do my secondary related keywords need to also come out as subjects in my sentences or can they be objects / predicate. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
High or low volume keyword
Does it take longer to rank on high volume versus a low volume keyword ? if so why Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Using on two pages a keyword in alternative language in the title
Hello SEO wizards, The main language on my website is english, and I am wondering if I can add a keyword in russian to couple of pages to the title and image alt tag and maybe header , with the hope that it would rank in google with that russian keyword.. But I am not sure how google would react to that, I tried to search information on that, but could not find a clear answer.... Many thanks for anybody who takes time to respond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bidilover0 -
Keyword Targeting / Cannibalisation
Hi Guys We're about to launch a very large website for a flooring company and would like to find out more about _key word _cannibalisation - to put my mind at rest. I know Rand posted a Whiteboard Friday early last year about this topic and mentioned using part of the same keyword was ok to use. All our keywords are specifically geared for "user intent" meaning each keyword has relevance and the content to back up the keyword. We've ensured the keywords are located within each url, placed at the start of the page title, h1 etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GaryVictory1 -
Am I turning a non geo-keyword into a geographic one?
Our client has a high powered site with tons of authority. They dominate in the eastern united states for multiple keyterms that relate to their service based company. However their closest competitor, a site with literally HALF of their authority, ranks ahead of them all over the world in markets outside of NYC. The client is using the terms "NYC and New York" all over their site, is it possible that they are giving themselves a local limitation by doing so when their competitors dont? The keyword itself doesn't necessarily lend itself to a local geo-based search result, but are we artificially CREATING that situation ourselves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fueled0 -
Dealing with Spammy Affiliate Site Copies
We have a longstanding site that sells media files with a large number of digital products. We offer a referral program with rewards for those that tell others about us. In the last year, we have seen some sites popping up primarily in China that appear to be spammy looking advertisement based copies of our own site with product pages that link back to our actual products using a referral link/code. (no-follow links.) These sites started popping out more when we noticed that some of their pages were outranking our own actual product pages. Any thoughts on this? Our affiliate policy states that the affiliate program is meant to help and not harm our site. In one sense this is traffic to our site which is supposed to be a good thing, but if these pages are ranking above our own, that is not what we are wanting. I would bet these pages might get clicked on and due to the spammy nature of these sites, the user bounces and never actually gets to our website. How would you handle something like this? Thanks!! Craig
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheCraig0 -
High search volume keywords
The problem is that our index is not in serps anymore with the high volume keywords (Pfizer, Roche, johnson & johnson).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele
We still keep these keywords in title, but it brings not much results. We made page www.domain.com/pfizer , added there Pfizer products with unique descriptions.
Product pages started to drive visitors, but not the www.domain.com/pfizer page. If we add a blog to the top of this page and add unique posts about Pfizer company news, would it help?
In this case this page would be unique, refreshed with new info, and have rotating pfizer products. Maybe some other suggestions?0 -
Has anyone seen a spammy competitors website hit by the Google changes?
I wonder, after all the talk of Penguins and Pandas if anyone has seen evidence of a competitor who you know has 1000's of spammy links removed from their page one position in Google. I have a trade competitor who appeared from nowhere about 12 months ago with 11,000+ back-links most of which were totally unrelated to our trade and appear to be link-farm links for the most part. After reading about Google's changes I thought the site might be hit but it remains up there in the first 2 or 3 results on page one. I wonder if anyone has seen similar sites penalised? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0