<em>'s

[dougie]

When you see this in the code on websites, it seems to put it into italics
<em>text</em>
Does anyone know if this helps seo wise please?

[httpwebwitch]

IMHO it makes no difference whatsoever.

<em> is a semantic tag meaning "emphasis". Browsers render it the same as <i>. kind of like the <strong> tag which is rendered like a <b>.

whether to use <em>&<strong> ot <i>&<b> is a religious choice. HTML purists tend to prefer <em> and <strong> because they have a real semantic meaning, like <P>, <blockquote>, and the rest. <b> just means "bold", which is a font rendering command, not a semantic definition.

I have heard people argue that words emphasized by formatting tags may be weighed more heavily by indexing engines, but I don't buy it.