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.
Does Bolding Text Have Any Impact on SEO?
-
Someone told me it does but I thought that was old school way of thinking. Any thoughts?
-
Far as I know - no value at all for serps....but for searchers perhaps...depends on whether it might be a transactional query or a instructional one etc etc....
-
There are some pretty good resources right here on Moz Christopher:
- http://moz.com/blog/topic-modeling-semantic-connectivity-whiteboard-friday (whiteboard Friday)
- http://moz.com/blog/semantic-seo-questions (blog)
- http://moz.com/webinars/semantic-seo-for-the-people (webinar)
- http://www.slideshare.net/MatthewBrownPDX/strings-to-things-the-move-to-semantic-seo-mozcon-2013 (Mozcon slide presentation)
-
Hello Christopher,
Bolding in and of itself confers no technical SEO advantage. However, it does have a "soft" SEO impact in that it can make content more accessible and readable from a user perspective. This might make it more likely to be shared, linked to, or otherwise cited, improving your potential reach and therefore helping with positive ranking signals to Google.
Dry, basic text can make a reader bored and increase Bounce Rate.
However, well-cited, original content with proper emphasis on relevant topics and words can make all the difference when it comes to user reception.
See the difference? Google will too, over time.
Hope this helps!
Rob
-
I doubt it has direct impact on SEO but I have seen Amazon use all capitals in their product headers for the keywords. I don't know if this is dynamically generated but to give you an example it can be something like:
16oz. boxing 134895tp BOXING GLOVES for GIRLS
My guess is the reason they do this is to make the keywords stand out on the SERP and increase their CTR but if it had direct impact to SEO everyone would be bolding and caps-locking.
-
Good response Jamie. Any places to learn about the advanced topic modelling and semantic markup that you to refer to?
-
Hi
If it benefits the reader go for it!
If it doesn't i wouldn't bother!
-
I would not say it has massive impact, plus bolding keywords is a bit of an old school practice, but there is still some benefit / value I believe to using it, although does make content look unsightly if over used.
It's also worth mentioning that this tag **is redundant and has been for many years, you would need to use the following tag Keyword. Be careful to how much you use it and how perfect you make the SEO you do not want to get penalized for over optimisation. **
**Its best to think about this when writing content anyway
Focus content beyond basic keyword density and take into consideration advanced topic modelling - synonyms and close variants; keyword usage and intent; and semantic mark-up
Regards,**
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
-
Do keywords within a dropdown menu add any SEO value?
I haven't seen this written about in some time. Has anyone had any experience dabbling in this?
On-Page Optimization | | gregvellante0 -
H1 tag positioning impact
Hello, I am currently working with a dev team to develop a new site. We have designed the title tags to sit below a banner image on each page but the technical team are insisting the h1 title tags must come above the banner for maximum SEO impact. I am sceptical about this, can anybody please shed some light and/or share any up to date resource on this? I have attached a side by side wireframe to illustrate the pages with the h1 tags in both positions. Thank you! HnWcLTx
On-Page Optimization | | Popidev0 -
Is Wix still terrible for SEO?
In Australia, I hear it over and over again that Wix is literally the worst site builder you can use due to it's poor site build for SEO. Has anyone here got some tangible reasons for why this is? As I am constantly getting asked this by clients who are using Wix and want me to help with their SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | UndergrndMarketing0 -
Background Images and ALT text
We pretty much exclusively use background images for our sites. How do I add in alt text? I tried a Google search for this issue and the best answer I could find was "Use the 'title' tag in the containing div", but that was from 2010. Is there a better way to do it? And no, we're not going to switch to using standard images, because background images are way more slick for UX.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelGregory0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Are blank Product Review pages bad for SEO?
Hi there, I'm running a new e-commerce site (BoatOutfitters.com) and have a question about our product review pages. On our current campaign, we have a lot of duplicate page content errors. When we export the data, it's almost all blank product review pages (since we are new, we don't have that many product reviews yet). Our product reviews aren't run through javascript, so we originally did not add them to a robots.txt file - however, I'm now wondering if it's worse to have all of these duplicate blank pages, or is it not affecting our SEO at all? Should we just wait until these products have reviews which will benefit our SEO and then they won't be considered "duplicate pages" - right? Sorry if this has been answered before - new here at SEO Moz and just looking for some help. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BoatOutfitters0 -
SEO for Japan
Google and Yahoo are the two major search engines in Japan. You can search using Western characters, and you often see English language results with Japanese (Chinese) characters next to them. As I don't speak Japanese, how do I approach SEO for my Japanese-language site? would appreciate any experiences and educational sources on the topic.
On-Page Optimization | | KnutDSvendsen0