Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading (used for emphasis)?

[jthompson0513]

Do you get penalized in search results when you use a heading tag, but it's not technically a heading? My clients are using heading tags for text they want to emphasize and make stand out. Does this affect search rankings for SEO?

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

What do you mean by heading tag? H1,H2 etc?

[ChrisAshton]

I would expect to. I can't say I've ever come across this question but we know Google doesn't really care if our headings are wrapped in a

tag these days, they just look at the styling so I would suppose this would be the same, just in reverse.

That said, it's kind of an awkward thing to do

[MattRoney]

It's not likely to be a penalty, but it's also not proper use of the tag. Personally, I'd want to change it.