Stong Tags still useful in 2016
-
Hello,
Are strong tags still beneficial in 2016? A few co-workers feel they look spammy on our site and that they are no longer really used by the search engines. However, we can't find any real significant info for no longer implementing them or saying they're outdated.
Thanks!
-
It's an interesting one and Paul has pretty much covered what most SEO's think about the use of bold for anything more than usability these days.
I actually performed split testing for this for a client a number of months ago (they like everything to be tested) and while the positions stayed static in Google, there was actually an increase in the amount of time that people spent looking at content with those bold words in them. I used HotJar to watch recorded user sessions.
Because of this, they use bold to emphasize key points now - A lot more came out of the testing around it, enough to make me realise just how much people scan pages for snippets of what they want.
-Andy
-
Right - for usability, not rankings.
-
I am still betting money on them when used to highlight internal links - because they attract a lot of clicks.
-
The use of strong tags has never been anything other than a miniscule ranking factor, if at all. There's no point to them for SEO at all - use them as benefits the readability of your copy for your visitors instead, as they were intended.
And yes, if your overuse has made your content look spammy, you're hurting your usability and trustworthiness (and therefore value of your site) FAR more than you might ever gain.
Paul
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
-
Logo Image H1 Tag SquareSpace
We have a site hosted on SquareSpace: Roomhance.com Going through the on-page optimizaton tool, we noticed that the H1 tags weren't fully optimized. If you click on view source on the page, it shows 2 H1 tags on the home page: id="logoImage"><a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">href</a><a <span="" class="html-attribute-name">="</a>/">src="//static1.squarespace.com/static/5bcca055ab1a62465f5b9ee7/t/5c18feb270a6adf771765799/1588613682225/?format=1500w" alt="Virtual Staging For Real Estate | Roomhance" /> style="text-align:center;white-space:pre-wrap;">Virtual Staging The 2nd one shown above it the H1 tag we want. I'm wondering if the H1 tag in the logo image is hurting us for SEO? Can't figure out how to modify it in SquareSpace.
On-Page Optimization | | vikasnwu0 -
Is it safe to use Microformats and Schema.org on one page?
I'm running a news blog and I'm using schema.org/NewsArticle. I would like to know if I should add microformats on the article page too or just use the schema? If I add both, will it effect my sites SEO/ranking? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2010 -
Avoiding Duplicate Title Tags and Duplicate Content
Hi - I have a question on how to both avoid duplicate title tags and duplicate content AND still create a good user experience. I have a lot of SEO basics to do as the company has not done any SEO to this point. I work for a small cruise line. We have a page for each cruise. Each cruise is associated with a unique itinerary. However the ports of call are not necessarily unique to each itinerary. For each port on the itinerary there are also a set of excursions and if the port is the embark/disembark port, hotels that are associated. The availability of the excursions and hotels depends on the dates associated with the cruise. Today, we have two pages associated with each cruise for the excursions and hotels: mycruisecompany.com/cruise/name-of-cruise/port/excursion/?date=dateinport mycruisecompany.com/cruise/name-of-cruise/port/hotel/?date=dateinport When someone navigates to these pages, they can see a list of relevant content. From a user perspective the list I see is only associated with the relevant date (which is determined by a set of query parameters). Unfortunately, there are situations where the same content is on multiple pages. For instance the exact same set of hotels or excursions might be available for two different cruises or on multiple dates of the same cruise. This is causing a couple of different challenges. For instance, with regard to title tags, we have <title>Hotels in Rome</title> multiple times. I know that isn't good. If I tried to just have a hub page with hotels and a hub page with excursions available from each cruise and then a page for each hotel and excursion, each with a unique title tag, then the challenge is that I don't know how to not make the customer have to work through whether the hotel they are looking for is actually available on the dates in question. So while I can guarantee unique content/title tags, I end up asking the user to think too much. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Marston_Gould1 -
Cannonical tag not working
I have put canonical tags on most of my pages as I'm slowly fixing the website errors that cause me to lose my rankings last July. However, when I search google for "graphene nanoplatelets" i find it shows the non canonical version. see below cut from the 2nd page of organic results. Graphene Nanoplatelets-GNPs - Cheap Tubes Inc. <cite class="_Hd">cheaptubes.com/graphene-nanoplatelets.htm</cite>High quality, low cost Graphene Nanoplatelets-GNPs.I know I put the canonical tag on the page, see code below. I do not see an error but I am an SEO rookie <title>Graphene Nanoplatelets-GNPs</title> If anyone can find an error in my canonical tag, please tell me where it is so I can fix. I know its affecting other pages as well and most should have the tag. Some non product pages don't have it yet but will as I continue fixing it.
On-Page Optimization | | cheaptubes0 -
Would it be inappropriate use of authorship mark-up for a directory profile?
If a business creates a profile in a directory and adds their Google+ page, and they add the domain/profile URL as a publisher they contribute to, is that a legit use? They are the author of the business profile, but it's not an article.
On-Page Optimization | | designquotes0 -
Should i avoid using H2 to optimize my home page
Hi, my site is www.in2town.co.uk and i am looking at ranking for lifestyle magazine but i am a bit worried. The titles of the articles on the home page are h2, and i am just wondering if i should change this to h3 as it may get confusing for google. Can anyone let me know if i should keep the article titles as h2 or if i am right that they need to be changed to h3 or something else any help would be great
On-Page Optimization | | ClaireH-1848860 -
H1 tag mandatory?
Hi there! Is a mandatory to fullfill the H1 tag in order to improve SEO? I mean I'm in the case where the keyword selected is appropiate to optimize the page but not appropiate to be in H1 tag 'cause it probably "doesn't sound good" to the user. Is it enought to be present in the url, title and description?Any suggestion? Thanks in advanced.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Using Robots Meta Tag on Review Form Pages
I have gone over this so many times and I just can't seem to get it straight and hope someone can help me out with a couple of questions: Right now, on my dynamically created pages created by filters (located on the category pages) I am using rel""canonical" to point them to their respective category page. Should I also use the robots meta tag as well? Similarly, each product I have on my site has a review form on it and thus is getting indexed by Google. I have placed the same canonical tag on them as well pointing them to the page with the review form on it. In the past I used robots.txt to block google from the review pages but this didn't really do much. Should I be using the robots meta tag on these pages as well? If I used the robots meta tag should I noindex,nofollow? Thanks in advance, Jake
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720