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.
How many strong tags is too many
-
Hi everyone, just a quick question, what are your views on the use of strong tags in content? how many is too many?
What is you have strong tags around every keywords for a sentance etc?
-
Well yeah that wouldn't be too many at all, but then going back to what Marcus and EGOL said you're much better off using bold tags for readability reasons than simply using it on keywords really. It has little to no impact in terms of rankings (probably a tiny bit) but can have a much greater impact on keeping your visitors moving forward and converting if used to break the content up into more digestible chunks with a good scent of what's important to them and where their eyes should go next.
I'd probably use bold a few more times in a 500 word piece but use it as what it is, an emphasis tag
Not emphasising keywords for Google but whatever it is in the content that will encourage the user to feel they're in the right place... if that happens to combine with some keywords or keyword phrases then great, but don't see it as a game-changer for rankings
-
Its keywords that are bold, so i guess perhaps 1 or 2 for around 500 words would be about right?
-
I suppose if you were going to look at it as "how many is too many" though it would be a percentage density instead of an actual number because it would depend on the size of the piece.
If you had a 1,000 word page then 50 words in bold might look okay but if it were a 100 word page then 50 words in bold would be ridiculous.
-
Exactly (the everything is important bit, not agreeing with me).
-
I agree with Marcus... When you make everything important then nothing is important.
-
If you have to ask that question, I would say you are using too many.
The on page tool looks for one instance of a keyword in either a strong, bold or em tag so if you are doing this for SEO, the prevailing common sense would be that any more than that one is too many.
If the highlighting provides some kind of benefit for your users then you can do more but if you are looking at bolding lots of text for SEO - then forget it.
The best answer is to just use common sense and create something that is readable with the important keyword highlighted if you can do so in a natural way.
Hope it helps.
Marcus
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
-
Adding Schema and No index tags via GTM
If we were to deploy schema and noindex tags to our website via Google tag manager, would these tags be viewed and respected by other search engines?
Technical SEO | | GregLB0 -
Product meta tags are not updating in my Magneto website!
I need some help! For some reason, each time I update the product meta tags in my Magento website, it doesn't change on the current website? Could someone help me understand why that is?
Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital0 -
Why is Google replacing our title tags with URLs in SERP?
Hey guys, We've noticed that Google is replacing a lot of our title tags with URLs in SERP. As far as we know, this has been happening for the last month or so and we can't seem to figure out why. I've attached a screenshot for your reference. What we know: depending on the search query, the title tag may or may not be replaced. this doesn't seem to have any connection to the relevance of the title tag vs the url. results are persistent on desktop and mobile. the length of the title tag doesn't seem to correlate with the replacement. the replacement is happening at mass, to dozens of pages. Any ideas as to why this may be happening? Thanks in advance,
Technical SEO | | Mobify
Peter mobify-site-www.mobify.com---Google-Search.png0 -
Do H2 tags carry more weight than h4 tags?
Of course H tags are key signals for relevance in search. Does an h2 tag send a significantly "louder" signal than an h4 tag?
Technical SEO | | aj6130 -
Div tags vs. Tables
Is there any reason NOT to code in tables (other than it being outdated) for SEO reasons?
Technical SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
What happens when you put an image in an H1 tag?
I am currently updating some H1 tags for my site but the tags are generated automatically by the text that is entered into a field on our content manager software. However because we need an image in this area as well, the entire field including the code for the image is surrounded by an H1 tag. Is this bad for SEO?
Technical SEO | | eVacStore0 -
Header Tags
Ok so I am writing different pages and the first heading is an H3 just because I wanted to it be a certain size. Then as you see the content, I have an H1 tag. Example page: http://www.oxfordmshomes.net/condos/acadia-court-Oxford-MS you can see that "Acadia First" is the first thing you see on the page and it uses an H3 element. Long story short, my hierarchy is wrong. Does this have any negative effect on my SEO efforts?
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
URL query strings and canonical tag
Hi, I have recently been getting my comparison website redesigned and developed onto wordpress and the site is now 90% complete. Part of the redesign has meant that there are now dynamic urls in the format: http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-productss/?display=cost&value=10 I have other pages similar to this but with different content for the different price ranges and these are linked to from the menus: http://www.mywebsite.com/20-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=20 Now my questions are: 1. I am using Joost's All-in-one SEO plugin and this adds a canonical tag to the page that is pointing to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/ which is the permalink. Is this OK as it is or should i change this to http://www.mywebsite.com/10-pounds-products/?display=cost&value=10 2. Which URL will get indexed, what gets shown as the display URL in the SERPs and what page will users land on? I'm a bit confused so apologies if these seem like silly questions. Thanks
Technical SEO | | bizarro10000