Does it still help to bold text on webpages to draw the attention of the search engine bots?
-
I remember a few years ago, bolding text was important for the search bots, is this still the case?
-
Fantastic real life test and observation. Highly appreciated!
-
Hi Augustos,
Yes, bounce rate is now acknowledged as a ranking factor by major search engines.
I would say you are probably doing exactly what I talked about in my response to Volkinator - are your conversion rates also improved?
Sha
-
Hi Volkinator,
I would actually offer a slightly different perspective on this.
I agree that there doesn't appear to be any real evidence that it helps rankings, but...
Think about what works for the visitor ... clever use of bold text can actually help conversions, but you have to think carefully about what you are doing because it can also hurt them terribly if misused.
First, highlighting just repetitive keyword terms or long sections of text is likely to hurt in 2 ways:
- It is likely to annoy people and therefore increase the bounce rate for the page.
- long passages of bold text reduce comprehension dramatically - if people don't understand the text on the page they are less likely to convert.
However, you can highlight just short phrases in the text to send a direct message to the reader. This will drive your message home more effectively and increase conversions.
This is an artificially constructed version to demonstrate what I am talking about, but in essence, the highlighted phrases when read alone create a shorter, more direct action statement from within the two longer sentences.
I have found this to be quite effective in improving conversions on client sites. One site in particular went from a conversion rate of 2.2% to a conversion rate of 26% after making only this change.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
I remember a few years ago, bolding text was important for the search bots, is this still the case?
Only when your competitors are naive and easy.
In any other situation you are in a battle of resources.
-
The pages I used bolding text, I can't see any rank boost but the bounce rate normally decrease in a good amount.
So here is the question, is bounce rate matter for ranking?
-
I did some test once, and i could not see anything worth noting
-
Thanks, I looked there before postign and didn't see anything specific to bolding text
-
It is still known to help, but to a generally small degree. You can see all the ranking factors in the latest study here.
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
-
American and Canadian spelling on the same webpage (impact on website and rankings)
Hi guys, Just a quick question here - will google penalize a website for having both Canadian and American spelling on a webpage or negatively impact rankings? Appreciate your help with this. Mark
Content Development | | marktheshark100 -
What's brewing on YouMoz? (And how you can Help)
In the last year, we've searched for ways to make YouMoz more interesting, more exciting and more inviting for the Moz community. The blog really does belong to the community, for it's the place where many novel ideas are shared, discussed, and further developed. Aside from being a great place to share ideas, though, YouMoz is also the primary vehicle by which many now-household names in online marketing were discovered. (Many of the top posts on YouMoz eventually find their way onto the main Moz Blog.) YouMoz belongs to the community. The blog was created as a place for the community to share and engage around bright ideas, in addition to being a vehicle for provoking thought around new concepts, strategies and tactics. For both aspiring and established authors, YouMoz has become a popular destination in the online marketing space. In the quest to make YouMoz even better, we’ve come with a few ideas to ensure that everyone continues to feel as though they can contribute to the blog. Beginning today, we’re introducing what we hope becomes four common formats for YouMoz: My Story, Headsmacking Tips, Problem Solved and Here’s How: My Story: The name pretty much says it all. Share with the community an interesting story related to online marketing. The story could be funny, personal or informational. As long as it’s interesting, well-written, and a benefit to the community, we’d love to hear it. A great example of the type of post we’re looking for is Mike Ramsey’s From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency. Headsmacking Tip: We’re bringing this format, first shared by Rand years ago on the main blog, out of the mothballs. Simply share with the audience an awesome online marketing-related tip that could make their jobs easier. (Example:Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else.) Problem Solved: Tell the audience how you solved a significant marketing problem, making it easier for you to do your job. Share the nitty-gritty details, and include any graphics or tips needed for the community to solve the problem for themselves. (Example: A Simple Guide to Overcoming Ad Blindness for Publishers.) Here’s How: This style of post is meant to be a little more wide-ranging, allowing you to share with the audience ways they can successfully deploy a technique, tactic, strategy, tool or anything else you’ve gleaned that might be of value to marketers. (Examples: How to Write Emails That Get Opened Every Time and The 10 Tools I Use to Monitor Social Media More Effectively. A big shout out to Katy Katz for the inaugural post in this category: Here’s How to Write an Email That Throws off a Whole Room’s Productivity.) Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Don’t overthink it. Read our guidelines, then dive in and get started. Also, we’d love to hear what you think about these new formats. Plus, we welcome your comments or questions. Feel free to share your thoughts below
Content Development | | ronell-smith7 -
Can you help me with my options on publishing others' news releases on my site?
I wish to add a "News" section to a highly-read, highly ranked blog I have. The News pieces will not be in the same flow as my regular posts. I'm contemplating what the best way to do this is, and would like some advice, please. I see these options: Option 1. Pay textbroker type people to rewrite news releases and post them into the news flow. Pro: indexable content. Con: expense. Option 2: Have a Submit News form on the site for vendors to submit their news stories. I would have to ask them to rewrite their stories to avoid dup content. Pros: Easy for me, no cost. Cons: Will still get dup content I bet, a lot of companies won't take the time to do it, and I will have no control over quality. (I really doubt this option will work). Option 3: Post news releases from companies in their raw format, and mark them as no index (even if I don't noindex, they won't move up the SERPs anyway, so why not just noindex them). Pros: very easy, all the news I want. Cons: not creating any indexable content. Bonus question: If I do Option #3, and I place an adsense ad on the page, will it work the same as if it was an indexed, non-duplicate content page? Your thoughts?
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Does a Google Map on the contact page help with SEO?
In regards to ranking organically for local search results (not google places), I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a Google Map on my Contact page with our location pinned? If so, how important do you think it is?
Content Development | | pharcydeabc0 -
Help with Content Revamp
Many years ago we wrote about 60 content pages for our surfboard e-commerce website targeting all the top popular keywords. Many of them generic but very keyword focused. We are now revamping our content our our site and want to move away from the generic side of things and actually rewrite all the pages to make them very useful and actually stuff our customers can really use and will find very helpful. I noticed that many times we wrote small pages less than 500 words that target similar keywords around a general theme. In looking at the analytics all the pages are getting a good amount of traffic and ranking well but im wondering would it be ok to focus on a main topic and combine similar pages if they are related? So i can take the say 60 articles and combine it down to say 10 articles and make the articles cover alot more stuff instead of just being small 500 word articles. As an example we have many surfboard models so we wrote an article for -Longboard Surfboards -Funboard Surfboards -Mini Malibu Surfboards -Retro Fish Surfboards -Womens Surfboards -Beginner Surfboards My question is could i weave these all together and write one long guide on say "Choosing The Type of Surboard you need" and cover all the board models in that article and then redirect the old pages to point to that one article. Would i still rank well for all these words Or would this destroy all my current rankings for these words? What is the best approach to rewriting and or combining old content pages that currently rank well but could be combined with others around the same theme to make it more user friendly?
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
Blog Anchor Text SEO Query
Apologies if the following is a basic question but I am just starting out with SEO and I have seen this quite a lot recently on sites I have been on. My question is if you have a self hosted blog e.g. blog.site.com or site.com/blog and you use keyword anchor text in your blog post does that bring SEO benefits in itself or does the blog post have to be shared/commented by readers to have an effect? I have seen/heard of many sites spending a lot of money getting copy done or spending their own time and resources starting a blog but the blogs remain unshared or comment-less. I am starting my own blog to go with my social media and website so I wanted to establish the basics. Thanks in advance guys.
Content Development | | jannkuzel0 -
Google still caching old site
Hi all, We just acquired a new domain that was being squatted on by a reseller for a very long time and on the 5th June migrated our site over to it, replacing their advertising holding page. The domain is http://primate.co.uk It's been a week now though and Google hasn't seemed to have updated it's cache. Doing a search for 'primate.co.uk' in Google lists the site but with the old holding page description. Web master tools doesn't report any errors or issues with the site. Does anyone know how we can get Google to index the domain and update it's cache? Cheers, Gordon
Content Development | | Primate0 -
My WebSite has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similiar but unique content ) to be listed?
My Web Site has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similar but unique content ) to be listed? Example: http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_12.htm http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_12_weeks.html
Content Development | | docjamesmd0