How many strong tags is too many
-
Hi everyone, just a quick question, what are your views on the use of strong tags in content? how many is too many?
What is you have strong tags around every keywords for a sentance etc?
-
Well yeah that wouldn't be too many at all, but then going back to what Marcus and EGOL said you're much better off using bold tags for readability reasons than simply using it on keywords really. It has little to no impact in terms of rankings (probably a tiny bit) but can have a much greater impact on keeping your visitors moving forward and converting if used to break the content up into more digestible chunks with a good scent of what's important to them and where their eyes should go next.
I'd probably use bold a few more times in a 500 word piece but use it as what it is, an emphasis tag
Not emphasising keywords for Google but whatever it is in the content that will encourage the user to feel they're in the right place... if that happens to combine with some keywords or keyword phrases then great, but don't see it as a game-changer for rankings
-
Its keywords that are bold, so i guess perhaps 1 or 2 for around 500 words would be about right?
-
I suppose if you were going to look at it as "how many is too many" though it would be a percentage density instead of an actual number because it would depend on the size of the piece.
If you had a 1,000 word page then 50 words in bold might look okay but if it were a 100 word page then 50 words in bold would be ridiculous.
-
Exactly (the everything is important bit, not agreeing with me).
-
I agree with Marcus... When you make everything important then nothing is important.
-
If you have to ask that question, I would say you are using too many.
The on page tool looks for one instance of a keyword in either a strong, bold or em tag so if you are doing this for SEO, the prevailing common sense would be that any more than that one is too many.
If the highlighting provides some kind of benefit for your users then you can do more but if you are looking at bolding lots of text for SEO - then forget it.
The best answer is to just use common sense and create something that is readable with the important keyword highlighted if you can do so in a natural way.
Hope it helps.
Marcus
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 h1 tags in Magento
Hi Moz Community, I know that hiding h1 tags isn't a good practice for SEO and google, but we have banners that look much nicer than the stock text Magento uses for its titles. The banners have the same text and the h1 is in the source code, just not visible on front end. The option Magento gives is "hide title on the page." So I'm not sure if this is actually the bad way to hide it or if it's fine for search engines. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Is this nofollow tag written wrong?
I'm doing a link audit and came across this nofollow tag: [http://www.jampaper.com/Envelopes](<a class=)">www.jampaper.com/Envelopes Does it matter that the nofollow tag is at the front? Shouldn't it after the URL?
Technical SEO | | jampaper0 -
H1 tag options
Hi, Working on a website and the developer has asked some questions about the h1 tag placement... So the main page has a bold heading named 'Overview' which then has a left hand navigation to tab through the content which appears next to the nav. The main content then has a heading and content below it. The 'Overview' heading appears on all pages of the left nav so really shouldn't be the H1 tag as it would cause duplication. One option we have thought about is to have the right hand heading above the content be the h1, and it has been suggested to stylize the 'Overview' heading but it won't actually be an h1. My question is would this have any negative impact on SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
"Standout" tag and "Original content" tags - what's the latest?
In November 2010 Google introduced the "standout tag" http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283 I can't find any articles/blog posts/etc in google after that date, but its use was suggested in a google forum today to help with original content issues. Has anyone used them? Does anyone know what's the latest with them? Are they worth trying for SEO? Is there a possible SEO penalty for using them? Thanks, Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
One H1 tag Dead Long Live multiple H1 tags?
Good afternoon from 9 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK, Ive been holding on to the mantra of one h1 tag per page but a developer has challenged me on this by stating you can have multiple h1 tags on the condition the page is HTML 5 & each h1 tag is within its own section or article tag. So the question is do i need to change my tune? Thanks in advance, David
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hello. My Seomoz report this week tells me that I have about 500 pages with Too Many On-Page Links One of the examples is this one: https://www.theprinterdepo.com/hp-9000mfp-refurbished-printer (104 links) If you check, all our products have a RELATED products section and in some of them the related products can be UP to 40 Products. I wonder how can I solve this. I thought that putting nofollow on the links of the related products might fix all of these warnings? Putting NOFOLLOW does not affect SEO?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Google showing former meta tags in search results inspite of new tags being crawled by it
I had changed the meta tags for a site www.aztexsodablast.com.au about a month back and Google has also crawled those new tags but in search results when I search for the term 'Aztex Sodablast' it is continuing to show the old tags while on the site, the new tags are being displayed. What may be the issue and how could I correct the problem?
Technical SEO | | pulseseo0 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1