When Is It Okay To Use Bold, Underline & Italic Text? Should I Stay Away From My Keywords?

[Videogamefan]

Hey guys I have a few questions. I am pretty sure that I was penalized by Panda a few years back because I went very heavy on bold, italic and underlining my keywords.  Since then I removed the bold, italic and underlines and never have used them again.  I was just reading an article on the Moz Blog and I saw some bold words. My questions are,  When Is It Okay To Use Bold, Underline & Italic Text? Should I Stay Away From My Keywords? Any help would be great! Thank you.

[rootwaysinc]

I have never seen or even heard that google penalize any site for Bold, Italic or underline. It is okay to use B.I.U with your content but as per my opinion you need not to B.I.U every keyword. you just need to write content for Users not for Search Engines, just B.I.U the words that should be highlighted on your content.

for Ex. if you are writing content for your product then highlight its Main functionalities. Hope it helps...

[AHC_SEO]

Using bold, underline and italic is fine. As long as there is a purpose, you will not be penalised. Remember the golden rule, be natural. If it is necessary to underline a keyword, then do so, but don't do it just to optimise that keyword..

[netzkern_AG]

My take: Do not use bold/italics/underline to mark keywords; use them to mark up important parts in your text in a consistent way. That can be the same but needn't be. For example, I tend to italicise proper Names and quotes; I tend to bold the most important points of a text so somebody can skim the page, immediately see the most important points and decide to read the rest or not (in addition to subheadings); I outright avoid underlines. Those are for links.

Nothing of that has to do with search engines. Its aim is improved legibility/"scannability". I doubt google would directly penalise for marking keywords up like this - it might worsen the user experience, though.

Nico

[Isla_McKetta]

I'm going to echo a bit of what's been said here already. Italics, bold, and underlining are tools in the same way bullet points are tools. These formats are all useful for:

• Calling attention to specific portions of text
• Adding clarity
• Making text easier to scan

I do not have evidence to say exactly how (or if) use of these tools will affect your rankings, but I'm certain that a user who encounters content that's overly FORMATTED or OneBigBlockParagraphOfText is much more likely to bounce.

So I recommend using those tools to your advantage and writing, always, for a human reader.