bold, italics, underline...does this still have impact on seo?

Do these still actually make a difference. I ask this question because I am wondering if it still does make a difference, should I not use font-weight:bold on style sheet and instead use <strong></strong> in the html file? Would this be better for SEO or does it not matter if its done in style sheet instead of the html file?

 

You could test it to see the difference... I think that strong should be used when it is logical. But I don't advise you to use it too much because it looks ugly and you might get slapped by search engines...

p.l.u.r.

 

i am pretty much talking about my links that are all bold anyways by style sheet....wondering if it would have an impact to use <strong> on them instead of doing it in style sheet. I do not use much bold/italics in the text on any of my sites regardless,

 

bump, any thoughts?

 

I would still use <strong>, <i>, etc,.

 

Strong or bold just do a very small difference on seo, according to a video that i saw regarding this related question it really doest really affect that much. A good content is for a good SEO.

 

I can't find the video but I remember Matt Cutts mentioning that it still helps a little but that it doesn't matter which of them you use - he said that they're all valued equally.

 

Yes you are right that was Matt Cutts video about google. I think it's somewhere in my bookmarks. I will look for it and hopefully i can able to post a link here soon.

 

Using font-weight:bold; in style sheet is weighed the same as using a <strong> tag? Correct me if I am wrong, but a SE spider does not see a style sheet does it? I realize it is only minimal value, but it would be value added vs. no value added if a spider can not read a css document.

 

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/css-and-seo.shtml

They do

 

I believe the larger the heading the more important the text is ranked.

 

Yes it have if you are not writing everything with that .. lol

 

Shaun, I suggest you to READ the EXCELLENT ARTICLE about Google Search Engine Ranking Factors? Just, don't overuse it, like I just did, because it really annoying.

 

This helps, but take care not to put < strong > several times, you may have to pay for that. Search Engine may not approve lot of < strong > or < i > at the same page.

 

Why dont you rather use <b> with the class to make it apper normal for the user where as it will carry the same value for a search engine.

 

They have an impact when measured against normal text, but it's not as big as some people will make it out to be. If you want to get an accurate idea of how the search engines weigh HTML elements, read the HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 specifications. Seriously, I'm not joking.

You could, but it would be a waste of time to do so, especially when that time could be better spent billing your clients, working, and having a social life.

The stylesheet won't affect your site's rankings unless you're using it to deliberately hide content from your users that the search engines would see. Note that legitimate uses of using CSS to hide content such as CSS dropdown menus, image substitution techniques and the like do not fall under this (thankfully).

And also use them in full accordance with the HTML specification. <strong> means "strong emphasis", <i> means "italicized" (useful for things that must be italicized, such as ship names), and so forth. Note that user agents are not required to italicize <em> or bold <strong> They can literally do whatever the hell they please with them.

Right. The impact is there, but it's not as big as some people think it is. Of course nobody outside of the search engines' engineering teams know for certain anyway, and they're bound by NDAs from speaking about it.

http://www.viperchill.com/matt-cutts/

Take your pick.

Look above.

Nope. Doesn't mean a thing. If it did, then you could wrap some text around a SPAN and then use your stylesheet to make it bold and give it a really large font size to make it look like a heading. Like I already said, search engines don't care about your stylesheet as long as you're not doing anything stupid (read: malicious).

I doubt the search engines would need to disapprove or penalize people for doing that when the mere act of placing that many <strong>, <em>, <b> and <i> tags on a Web page will piss people off so much that they won't even bother linking back to your site because it's literally unusable to them.

Because it doesn't work that way.

 

yes, in my opinion, any text formatting affects SEO. bold, italic, size, color, background color...everything.

 

color and background color won't affect it

 

I have a couple of sites on page 1 of google and i believe the <b> tag helps above and beyond SOP.

 

i am not 100% sure but i think yes
h1 and h2 tags definitely do!