diberry - 2:34 pm on Oct 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

What Robert Charlton said.

In any case, it is tricky to know how to employ emphasis without falling afoul of the algo. From a user's perspective, if headers and bold font make it easy to scan the article and get just the info you need, then you've done a great job. If the headers and bold font, however, are kind of distracting or confusing, then tone them down.

That said, unfortunately there's no way to be sure how the algo will read it. I remain convinced that Google believes *wrongly* that Penguin and Panda can tell the academic and appropriate use of keywords/headers/etc. from a spammy use of the same.

I've recently noticed some top websites NOT putting keywords in bold or header print, so maybe that's the solution. Maybe you need something like this:

Title: How to trim widgets with a spork

Header 1: It's not what you think

Paragraph explaining that you use the spork in a manner different than the user probably expected.

Bullet 1: {bold}Working The Tableware.{/bold} You can use your spork to blah blah blah...

See how the word "spork" is never in bold or header, but just regular text? I have no idea how that works for targeting keywords, but since targeting keywords=SEO and Google seems to be on the warpath against any form of SEO, maybe this is the new right way to go about things? Dunno, it's just something I've been seeing.