Some SEO expert professionals don’t agree with it. But Google has already confirmed it. Bolded text in a paragraph can help your SEO efforts. It allows Google’s crawler to better understand your content better.
An SEO Expert Submitted a Question About the Benefits of Bolded Text
During the Google Search Central SEO hangout last week, someone asked regarding the benefits of bolded text. Is it just a stylistic choice or can it affect SEO? John Mueller replied that bolding words does help SEO.
But the main question is to what extent? Mueller stated that bold text does add extra value to any page. Google’s crawlers can use bolded or italicized text to better understand what’s vital on that page. Even though Google can figure out what is pertinent, the bolded text makes your content or message clearer.
Mueller said in the video:
“So usually we do try to understand what the content is about on a web page, and we look at different things to try to figure out what is actually being emphasized here, and that includes things like headings on a page. But it also includes things like what is actually bolded or emphasized within the text on the page. So to some extent that does have a little bit of extra value there, in that it’s a clear sign that actually you think this page or this paragraph is about this topic here.”
Will Bolding Text Improve Your Rankings?
John posted follow-up tweets about it. He said that it’s semantic HTML. That is, it makes it easy to recognize for users and bots what the owner thinks must stand out on a page. However, when it comes to skyrocketing your rankings, John tweeted this message:
“These things don’t make your site rocket up in rankings, but especially with regards to understanding pages better, small things can help. Think of it more as giving relative guidance within the page; if you have 5 “SEO-points”, what should they be used for on this page?”
Ultimately, according to John, every text understanding can play a role in your ranking. That is, if Google can understand better what the page is about, it can show the page to relevant queries. It can mean higher rankings for some related terms but lower for others.
What Can You Do About this Google Confirmation About Bolding Text?
What John wants to emphasize is that bolding can help Google’s crawlers in understanding what the page is all about. The bolded text is like telling the crawlers that you want that information to stand out. But if you bold everything, though, the purpose will be nullified.
In that case, it’s just helpful if you bold a handful of sentences or words where you can tell the crawlers that they are important for you. Since bolding will make your crawlers understand your page, it’s a wise idea to bold the keywords that you’re targeting on that page. This will help the crawlers get a good grasp of your content. Need someone to audit your content and find which text that must be bolded? Get an SEO expert to do it for you. Call SEO Expert Danny at (855) 605-7361.