When we talk about on-page SEO.... we know it's better to have your keywords bolded, underlined, italicized... but about bold and italic text... how is it better to use it? use <strong> or <b> use <italic> or <i> (not even sure it's <italic>) ? Let me know what you guys think/know
Haha - Me neither... I just know when I validate pages, one of the tips that come up say to use <strong> and <em> instead...
<strong> and <b>, just as <em> and <i>, aren't the same thing. <strong> and <em> both mean that the author wanted to stress the importance of what's inside these tags and their content may be rendered using other means than just bold or italic text. e.g. strong, em {color: red; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline} strong {font-size: 1.2em} Code (markup): <b> and <i> always should be used to render text in bold or italic. J.D.
Oh... So does that mean that I should stop using <strong> and <em> in order to emphasise copy on the page then?
Right... So for the purpose of asking which is the correct tag to use, I'm gonna stick with <strong> and <em>. They can both be styled, and they are both intended to bold and italicise text on a page... But hey, if I'm worng, let me know because I'll have a lot of sites to redo otherwise (But I think I'm right on this one).
and if you change the font weight for <strong> it will not be bold either.... my point is you can use both... and both are influenced by CSS and not by any outside factors... my question was... from the SE point of view... which is better to use: strong or b?
The meaning of <strong> is not bold - it's emphasis, whichever way you want to emphasize. Red, green, underline, etc. It's perfectly Ok to change it's appearance because no matter what the change is, it will be something that the author considers as emphasized. <b> on the other hand is always bold and changing <b> to red or different font size would be a big mistake. So, if you want to ephasize, use <strong> or <em> if you want bold, use either <b>, or a style. The thing with styles is that <b>1.</b> always beats <span class="bold">1.</span>. This is what <b> is for - short highlights. For everything else (e.g. column formatting, divs, etc), styles should be used instead. One more thing. Some of the flavors of HTML depreciated <b> (e.g. XHTML Basic for mobile devices) in favor of styles. J.D.
Yeah, but BOTH can be styled... Anyway.. In terms of SEO, I would say <strong>. I read something ages and ags ago that echoes those comments.... Things may have changed, but I do OK in terms of rankings and I always use them. [As a side note, I doubt very much whether it makes much of a difference, but every little helps right...]
If you check with W3C I think you will see that <b> and <i> will be phased out in favor of <strong> and <em> as of now they are both supported, and when support will stop for <b> and <i> is still up in the air.