Using Bold or Strong tags

SEO Tip: Never ‘bold‘ a page or a paragraph. Whether using b or strong it’s important ONLY to bold keywords or links with anchor text.

I see a lot of websites that ‘bold’ the whole page or a whole paragraph. Many do this to make the letters stand out, but it will only hurt your web page. You will lose the effect of using these tags, and there will not be an emphasis on the words you may to stand out for your readers. You should use b or strong tags to emphasize keywords on a page, and not irrelevant words.

It’s like driving on a road, and you come across a speed bump. The speed bump is unnatural to the road, and the point of it being there is to tell you to slow down. Spiderbots scan your page looking for these speedbumps (tags), but if the whole page is bolded then it will lose the effect of this tag.

Also, make sure to bold an anchor text link. SEO for Dummies <<<< like that. There are a few emphasis on this link. The first part is that it’s a link pointing to my homepage which is also known as internal linking since it’s done ‘internally’. The second part is that it contains keywords, and doesn’t just say ‘click here’ or only shows the URL.  The third part is that it’s bolded. I always use this format when it comes to anchor text links especially if it’s a backlink. If you’re writing a blog, I wouldn’t recommend using it if you’re using a sentence as an anchor text. I would recommend using this in a 1-4 keyword phrase.

Here is a video of Matt Cutts going over using b or strong. Matt Cutts states that Google treats the b and strong tags with the same weight.