Does Bolding Text Have Any Impact on SEO?

[tryfantasy]

Someone told me it does but I thought that was old school way of thinking.  Any thoughts?

[Nobody1565908128979]

I would not say it has massive impact, plus bolding keywords is a bit of an old school practice, but there is still some benefit / value I believe to using it, although does make content look unsightly if over used.

It's also worth mentioning that this tag **is redundant and has been for many years, you would need to use the following tag Keyword. Be careful to how much you use it and how perfect you make the SEO you do not want to get penalized for over optimisation. **

**Its best to think about this when writing content anyway

Focus content beyond basic keyword density and take into consideration advanced topic modelling - synonyms and close variants; keyword usage and intent; and semantic mark-up

Regards,**

[TheZenAgency]

Hi

If it benefits the reader go for it!

If it doesn't i wouldn't bother!

[tryfantasy]

Good response Jamie.  Any places to learn about the advanced topic modelling and semantic markup that you to refer to?

[mack-ayache]

I doubt it has direct impact on SEO but I have seen Amazon use all capitals in their product headers for the keywords.  I don't know if this is dynamically generated but to give you an example it can be something like:

16oz. boxing 134895tp BOXING GLOVES for GIRLS

My guess is the reason they do this is to make the keywords stand out on the SERP and increase their CTR but if it had direct impact to SEO everyone would be bolding and caps-locking.

[Toddfoster]

Hello Christopher,

Bolding in and of itself confers no technical SEO advantage. However, it does have a "soft" SEO impact in that it can make content more accessible and readable from a user perspective. This might make it more likely to be shared, linked to, or otherwise cited, improving your potential reach and therefore helping with positive ranking signals to Google.

Dry, basic text can make a reader bored and increase Bounce Rate.

However, well-cited, original content with proper emphasis on relevant topics and words can make all the difference when it comes to user reception.

See the difference? Google will too, over time.

Hope this helps!

Rob

[DonnaDuncan]

There are some pretty good resources right here on Moz Christopher:

• http://moz.com/blog/topic-modeling-semantic-connectivity-whiteboard-friday (whiteboard Friday)
• http://moz.com/blog/semantic-seo-questions (blog)
• http://moz.com/webinars/semantic-seo-for-the-people (webinar)
• http://www.slideshare.net/MatthewBrownPDX/strings-to-things-the-move-to-semantic-seo-mozcon-2013 (Mozcon slide presentation)

[JVRudnick]

Far as I know - no value at all for serps....but for searchers perhaps...depends on whether it might be a transactional query or a instructional one etc etc....