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://cloudz.click/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
-
Product content length & links within product description
Hello, I have questions regarding content length and links within descriptions. With our ecommerce site, we have thousands of products, each with a unique description. In the product description, I have links to the parent category and grandparent category (if it has one) in the main product text which is generally about 175 words. Then I have a last paragraph that's about 75 words that includes links to our main homepage and our main product catalogue page. Is the content length long enough? I used to use text that was 500 words, and shortening it I still rank when launching new products, so I don't think an increase in text length will have any additional benefit. I do see conflicting information when I do searches, with some people recommending a minimum of 300 words and some saying to try and go a 1000 for category pages. In regards to the links, I noticed a competitor has stopped following this format, so I'm unsure if I should keep going too. Is it too many links to have each of the products link back to the main catalogue and homepage? Is it good to have links with anchor text to the categories a product is in? There are breadcrumbs on the page with these links already. There are already have heaps of links on our pages (footer, and a right sidebar with image links to relevant categories), so my pages do get flagged for too many links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JustinBSLW0 -
Is using hyphens in a URL to separate words good practice?
Hi guys, I have a client who wants to use a hyphen to separate two words in the URL to make each work stand out. Is is good or bad practice to use a hyphen in a URL and will it affect rankings? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Best practice for footer in ecommerce - Shall I add Top Category links?
What would you recommend regarding links to "Top Products" and "Top Categories" in footer? Would you add them to give extra link juice to top categories? would you try to avoid category links in footer that are already in the header navigationor in the main content area to avoid linking twice from all pages? would you vary these top category links in footer according to main category
On-Page Optimization | | lcourse0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | | HochKaren0 -
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 -
Best practice for Meta-Robots tag in categories and author pages?
For some of our site we use Wordpress, which we really like working with. The question I have is for the categories and authors pages (and similiar pages), i.e. the one looking: http://www.domain.com/authors/. Should you or should you not use follow, noindex for meta-robots? We have a lot of categories/tags/authors which generates a lot of pages. I'm a bit worried that google won't like this and leaning towards adding the follow, noindex. But the more I read about it, the more I see people disagree. What does the community of Seomoz think?
On-Page Optimization | | Lobtec0 -
What is the best way to format an xml sitemap?
I am wondering if the urls should be in alphabetical order or if they should be set out in a way that reflects the sites hierarchy? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Webat0 -
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?
On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion0