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.
Bold & Italics Best Practice?
-
Hi All,
Does anyone know the official best practice use of bold and italic fonts?
If I have a long page of text- 800 words + I usually bold a few sentences to allow the user to be able to read only the bold on the page, and still make sense of the article. By reading all the bold it will kind of make sense and the user gets the point of the article.
This wasn't really done for SEO purposes, but so the reader gets to the bottom of the page in a reasonable amount of time, and gets all the key points and facts of the article.
I was advised not to do this and to just bold/italic the keyword/phrases the article was written to rank for.
I would like to know anyone else's opinion/strategy on using bold/italics effectively and within best practices.
What's the official word?
Thank you for your help. Ian
-
I am working on an Online Digital Marketing Magazine and many times I am explaining a concept or something about marketing. If I am talking about Topic "A" and I explain what it means and why it is important, I like embolden the topic I am explaining and put the explanation in italics.
In my view, this is for the purpose of skimming the article to pick out the more important parts. Additionally, since the topics being explained are the targeted keywords I figured it would add to SEO, I just hope it doesn't hurt rankings but the ever looming over-optimizing threat. Not sure on any quantitative limits on bold and italicized text but would love to see some numbers on this topic.
I guess I am approaching this with a usability and reader perspective but everyone is different, and I know someone will look at the article and be like oh no why!>?
Please let me know if you think this way or a good reason to stop thinking this way.
-
Ian, the use of bold and italic text within pages or articles is so minute to the SEO ranking factors that your best focusing on what really matters for getting ranked. This article can help you see that bold and italic text doesn't even make the list http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors. Even the H1 tag is 3/4 the way down the list.
Per using bold and italic text for your readers, absolutely! Use it appropriately as it seems you have been doing. Also, consider breaking up content with bullet points or using call out sections in the page (if using WordPress, they have plugins and widgets for these call outs to highlight important content snips).
I'd stray away from bolding singular keywords or italicizing a keyword as those are old, out-dated SEO tactics which were never proven to have any affect, positively or negatively. Keep doing what you're doing and always keep your readers' best interests in mind for them to have a nice experience on your site(s)... Google will see this in the Analytics as they remain on the site/pages longer.
Hope this was helpful. - Patrick
-
Hi Ian,
As already covered, there is no official word on using bold and italics improving your SEO that I know of. I also suspect it might be looked upon favourably by Google, but I think it's only ever going to be a minor factor compared to the keyword density in the article and the positioning of the keyword in page headings (H1-H3) and page title.
Personally I think you would create more of an impact by splitting up the article (if possible) under different headings and into managable paragraphs and sentences and testing it using a tool like Flesch Reading Ease, rather than bolding inline sentences/keywords.
George
-
I think bolding key sentences to help readability is a great way to go. People tend to scan webpages instead of reading every word. I don't think only bolding keywords is wise since it looks really tacky and probably has zero effect on your ranking for the targeted keyword. It might even be considered spammy.
-
Hi Ian,
Bold and anchor text sure helps. But there's really no official word on this.
I would suggest to always stick to what's best for the user. If you think that highlighting the most relevant phrases will help the user get the article much more faster, then stick to it. These way, you will provide a better user experience and probably reduce bounce rate as well. Users won't get bored by too much text and leave.
Also, you don't want to over optimise your site.
Remember to always build your sites for users, not for robots.
Hope it helps!
Guillermo
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
-
Best practices for publishing sponsored content
Hello, Our website hosts sponsored content from different brands. Should we be listing the sponsor either on the frontend and/or through markup? - Would either way have any sort of an impact? The content itself is already clearly marked as 'sponsored content' but we were more interested in listing the specific sponsor. Also, we’re assuming the outbound links would need to be marked rel="sponsored" but are there any other best practices we should be implementing? Any insight would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | Ben-R
Thank you in advance.
Best,0 -
Ranking & Visibility suddenly Down for my website
Any google updates or, can anyone tell me what google running, web ranking down, majority keywords showing on 1st pages right now those are on 3rd page, so is there any specific reason, or any solutions plz.. this s my website www.iqlance.com can anyone help me to audit and what was the issues facing exactly..
On-Page Optimization | | harry5501 -
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
Best schema option for condos / condominiums?
Hey guys, I'm doing a review on some schema on some of our sites. Most of them are generic using LocalBusiness. There are a few more specific schemas I could use, but not sure what would be the most relevant. Wondering if any of you have a suggestion or ideas? https://schema.org/Residence https://schema.org/LodgingBusiness https://schema.org/ApartmentComplex or I could just stick with LocalBusiness. I'm leaning towards LodgingBusiness or ApartmentComplex.... but when I think of LodgingBusiness I think of something temporary / vacation type deal like hotels. Apartments... kind of self explanatory, a condominium isn't exactly an apartment but perhaps it is more comparable to an apartment than a hotel, motel or inn. What are you thoughts on this? Also, which "format" is better to use RDFa, microdata, or JSON-LD. Does it matter?
On-Page Optimization | | donnieath0 -
Best way to nofollow affiliate links?
I don't "nofollow" affiliate links but I have quite a few. Doing them one by one would just be an impossible job. Would it be best to get a plugin that nofollows EVERYTHING? What would google prefer? I need to DOFOLLOW some links because those sites deserve it.
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
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 -
Wordpress & trailing slash on domain name
Hi recently changed my site so it is based on Wordpress, got my preferred domain set in Google webmaster as www.domian.co.uk but since moving to wordpress my domain is now having a slash put on the end of it like www.domain.co.uk/ Most of the links going to my homepage do not have the slash on the end so am I right in thinking I should get rid of the slash from my site so I have one consistent url? If so any ideas how to banish the slash? Cannot seem to do it through the Wordpress general settings (despite preferred domain being set as www.domain.co.uk !) Thanks T
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
Best SEO structure for blog
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0