Does **tag on a product description help?**
-
Hi,
Does using the tag on a line of text in the products description help with SEO for that keyword phrase?
**See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/tops/passarella-death-squad/passarella-death-squad-t-shirt-white/0/
I have bolded the Passarella Death Squad T-Shirt line. Would this help in any way?
Cheers
Will**
-
Great question, but the short answer is “No”. Back in 1996 it may have been a small contributing factor but not today.
But…
The strong tag does have another propose.
So lets say we have an article that’s quite wordy. We all know the average web user isn’t going to read it all so this is where the strong tag can be of used.
Emphasising keywords or sentences using the bold tag is a great way of getting the message across and noticed
-
Hi Kieran,
Thanks for your reply. They are not a band but a designer clothing label.
The price reflect the quality of the fabric, made from fine japanese fabric. Some of the descriptions say this but I should really get it in all of them.
The problem I see is were getting hundereds of items online, going into great detail on each item description is a task upon its self.
Maybe the t-shirt image blurb would be useful as it will tell the customer exactly what it stands for.
Within that description, how many times would be recommend to get the words "passarella death squad t-shirt" in there? Currently aiming for about twice, is this ok?
Cheers
Will
-
I agree that there is probably next to no SEO value for using the **tag here. What I do like is that it works from a usability standpoint. To me it is natural for that line to be bolded because it is the name of the product. It makes the name stand out a bit and makes it easier for the user to know what they are looking at. For that, +1. **
-
Agree strongly Valery there (get it - sorry saddo response)
Strong is coming to the fore more as the default for bold on most WYSIWYG editors but I don't think Google worries too much about it. There was a lot of activity in making your first use keywords bolded for the first paragraphs to help SEO but for product pages I would personally concentrate on adding content so for the T-Shirt page that you refer to here I would write a little blurb about the group, mention the material of the T-Shirt. Even a short blurb as to what the image on the T-Shirt is about.
You are looking for people who are fans of this group (never heard of them myself) who search online If this is one opf their songs then perhaps a YouTube link. Looks like there are a lot of vendors out there selling T-Shirts of this type so make the page stand out.
IMHO bold/strong is the least of your concerns. Work the group angle as hard as possible. The T-Shirts aren't a cheap item so you should explain in the text what makes them worth the price.
-
From what I can tell SEO-wise they're basically the same, and they may not have any benefit at all. This is gut feel (since Google doesn't exactly publish this stuff) but strong/bold might be comparable to H5 1/2 or something like that relevance-wise.
Where it gets interesting though is semantics. STRONG implies emphasis, where BOLD is a formatting choice. From what I've been reading some semantic aware systems would give STRONG priority, whereas they would treat BOLD the same as Font-color=Blue, or some other non-semantic signal. Because of this Strong is interpreted differently in some specialist systems (e.g. readers for the blind, certain mobile browsers), but that becomes more a client side concern than an SEO one.
From a standards perspective there's some discussion saying that in the XHTML 2.0 spec Bold is actually being deprecated in favor of Strong:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-257310.html
Given all of that, my guess is Strong may have some weight, but not enough to be a critical factor that's going to put you 'over the top' in any meaningful way. I also don't think it hurts unless abused, and again that would only be for semantic-aware clients like visual readers and so on.
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
-
Hiding Out of Stock Products for Users
Hello I have a website having products out of stock. Right now they are not listed on the website but working with 200 status code and they are indexed in Google as well. I need to understand if they affect my website? is it negative for SEO? what would be the best way to handle out of stock products? what if they are out of stock for a long time and discontinue for future? how search engine treat those products? are they consider as hidden links as they are not accessible from website as google says every page should link from atleast one static page. Please advise
Web Design | | ShaunPhilips0 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Should Our Mobile Responsive Version of our Ecommerce Site include the on Page content to Help with Rankings
Hello All, We are soon to launch our new redesigned website along with a mobile responsive version but i have noticed we currently don't include the on page Content we have on the mobile version which we have on the desktop version to help with rankings etc. I am not sure how google does mobile research with regards to rankings. We have designed our responsive version to be as user friendly as possible at the expense of having to much clutter/content but I am wondering now , if we will rank on mobile if all our on page content isn't present. Just wondered if we should include it at the bottom of the pages with say a "Read more" extension to help avoid clutter? Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Web Design | | PeteC120 -
Using More Info javascript:toggleDisplay tag for More info text
Is there any harm in using javascript so a user can "toggle" open or closed additional text on a website? For example, if a user wants to read more about something, they can click on "More Info" and the text would then appear. Google is able to read the text, because I chose a random 8 word section of the text within the More Info and pasted it into a Google Search and the website showed up in search results. Just wondering if using this technique would have any negative impact. Here's what the code would look like:
Web Design | | EEE3
<a <span="">title</a><a <span="">="Show Tables" href="</a><a class=" " target="_blank">javascript:toggleDisplay('table1')</a>">More Info style="display: none;" id="table1"> this is where the text would be, and from this section was where I grabbed text to search with in google. Then in the footer, here is the script needed so the more info will work: I am by no means an expert in coding/html/javascript. Thanks!0 -
Need help to implement microdata/microformat for ecommerce site
**Can somebody please help me to implement microdata/microformats codes for our ecommerce product pages? **
Web Design | | EastEssence22
Please guide me if you have some CSS example for the same. Thanks.0 -
How do search engines interpret <hgroup>...</hgroup> tags?
Hi there. I'm building an HTML 5 site and through research of new HTML 5 elements I've seen little conclusive information about the interpretation of the new <hgroup>tag, in terms of SEO application and interpretation. In particular does Google interpret the nested heading tags as individual elements or does it combine them into one entity? For example, say I have: <hgroup> # Article Heading ## Article Sub-heading </hgroup> How is this interpreted by Google and what would be some good SEO best practices regarding the <hgroup>tag in HTML5: Is it interpretted as a single tag (" Article Heading: Article Sub-heading ") or two separate heading tags (one and one )? Also, how much does the ordering of the tags matter (say for example I wanted something like the following for visual purposes? <hgroup> ## Article Sub-heading # Article Heading </hgroup> One last thing: is it safe to assume that it is indeed OK to have multiple tags on a single page (as referenced by Matt Cutts a while back in a Webmaster Video)? Thanks! </hgroup> </hgroup>
Web Design | | LMDNYC2 -
How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx? If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad. Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages? And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0 -
Footer Links for Design Shops - Do They Help or Hurt?
I work on SEO for a number of clients at our agency, including our in-house SEO for our own website. I use Open Site Explorer all the time to analyze my competition in the SERPs and try to gain links from this insight. However, I've noticed a number of agencies and design shops that place a link in the footer of websites they've designed and created. For example "Site design by ABC Agency (hyperlinked to the agency's home page). Or I've seen small logos or graphics that link to the designer's site and use the "alt tag" to get stronger anchor text. From a design perspective, I don't care for this, but as a SEO...I can see why. We've designed a number of websites and have more in the pipeline, but have not used this tactic before. It seems like an irrelevant link from a content/user standpoint, however, it seems to work for a lot of agencies and design shops. Any input from the SEOmoz community would be great. Is it a short-lived strategy? Does it help or hurt your link-building and "rapport" with Google, Bing, Yahoo? Thanks everyone.
Web Design | | PHDL0