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.
Should I use bold for the first few sentences of a text?
-
I would like to know if anyone knew if the relevance of a page changes if I bold the first few sentences. Our journalist wants to bold the first few sentences in every article to make it easier to read, how does that affect SEO?
-
go for it, I agree with Stores, it will help rather then hinder.
I set up a test to see just how well bold helped keywords, the test were inconculsive, I suggest it has only mild benefit. i believe SEOMoz has shown the same.
What you suggest is quite natural, iwould tr5y to get the guts of the subject into that paragraph
-
Bold as a very few correlation with rankings. Therefore use bold naturally, as a way to those users who scan the page and don't read it word by word to understand exactly what the page is about (therefore bolding the main kw is surely justified) and intrigue them so to stop and read more campy the page and stay on it and on the site more time during its visit. Bold or enhance the call to actions.
-
i agree wit the sentiments above. Bolded keywords is said to be a best practice, but in moderation. if all the words are bolded, then the crawler must assume that no one word is more important than the next.
If you are looking for that bolded look, a simple
tag will help you achieve the same aesthetic.
hope that helps you, and good luck.
-
Google's algorithm is not known to us so we are left to guess. There could be some case studies but even so, the algorithm changes around 500 times per year so it is impossible to know for sure.
My best guess is, all forms of attention grabbing on a page such as bold and italics are put in a bucket which share the weighting bonus. If you have only a couple words on a page appear in bold, then all the weight would apply to those couple words. If you present the entire page in bold, then all terms would be treated equally.
My normal recommendation would be to use bold for the most important words, or the most relevant ones. If you feel the design of the page improves by using bold text on the first couple of sentences, consider changing the text color instead. I have seen some creative results in this regard but don't have any examples to share.
-
I would keep and _tags for specific keywords, sentences, quotes, etc. However, if it is for purely cosmetic reasons your editor wants to bold the first sentences, it should be an easy CSS hack that will help the visual aspects of the content be seen. _
Remember to incorporate best practices into all your code and remember how the content is being crawled.
-
Well written content introduces the main topic within the first few sentences, so should contain the most important keywords anyway. Emboldening those sentences will add a little weighting to their content so this should help your SEO rather than hinder it.
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
-
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
How to re-follow using the WPSEO plugin
Hello, I unindexed numerous blog low quality blog posts and nofollowed them at the same time using the Advanced meta tab for the Yoast WPSEO plugin. I am trying to reindex them, which I figured out and can successfully do, What I cannot figure out is these posts will not return to follow status and remain nofollow. I have been recreating the blog posts, but this is very time consuming. Is there some way to do this without have to reduplicate a new blog post? I Googled this and searched MOZ with no luck. thank you Mike
On-Page Optimization | | crazymikesapps10 -
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
On-Page Optimization | | cookie7770 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
Using H3-4 tags in the footer or sidebars: good or not?
Howdy SEOmoz fans! Is it considered a good / bad / neutral practice to include H tags in the footer, as a mean to group a few links? Take http://www.seomoz.org/ for instance: - Voted Best SEO Tool 2010! = H2
On-Page Optimization | | AxialDev
- Looking for SEO consulting? = H3
- Product and Tools = H3 Company = H3 etc. I often see the same principle applied to sidebars. I feel like because they don't contribute to the actual content structure and because they are repeated from page to page, we should avoid them, but I have nothing to back my intuition. [+] Perhaps they are helpful for usability (screen readers) and thin added value (i.e. category names that carry more weight than if they weren't headers). What do you think? Thanks for your time.1 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
Is it ok to use the H1 tag for bullet points?
Our search results page doesn't have a typical H1 tag because adding a true header would take up space unnecessarily. Therefore, we've assigned the h1 tag to be the breadcrumb. As filters are applied, the breadcrumb grows to include these filters. This breadcrumb is coded as bullet points, even though they're not the typical style of bullet points. Here's a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/AjGC9iAYR3 For example, the breadcrumb: Home >> NYC Social Media Classes >> Adult >> Manhattan is currently coded as: | |
On-Page Optimization | | mevseo
| | * class="first"><a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/">Home |
| | * <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>/nyc/classes/social-media/age-adults/neighborhood-manhattan" class="Selected">Search results |
| | |
| | |
| | id="cat_social-media" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setCategory('social-media')" /> |
| | # style="font-size: 12px; display: inline;">NYC Social Media Classes |
| | <label <span="">for</label>="cat_social-media"> |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="age_adults" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setAge('adults')" /><label <span="">for</label>="age_adults">Adults</nobr> |
| | |
| | |
| | <nobr>id="nbhd_manhattan" type="checkbox" checked onclick="setNeighborhood('manhattan')" /><label <span="">for</label>="nbhd_manhattan">Manhattan</nobr> |
| | |
| | | Right now that H1 tag just relates to 'NYC Social media classes', but we'd like to expand it to include both 'Manhattan' & 'Adults' - would that be ok? And if so, would it be better to put the tag before and after the tag?0 -
URL best practices, use folders or not ?
Hi I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | 77Agency0
