Bolding Keywords on Page - How many times?

[gouri]

I have read that it is ok to bold keywords that appear on a webpage. It might help in the SERP.

My question is on a page, how many times would you bold a keyword? Is there a number to keep in mind.

[tedster]

Use bold when it makes sense for your copy and don't obsess about the minutiae of on-page techniques. As with all SEO details, there is no number and no precision formula to follow. I think you're reading information with its roots in the last century - this kind of idea belongs to the SEO of many years ago, not today.

[gouri]

I hear what you are saying, Ted.

I will go with what seems right.

On an inner page, would you bold the keyword that it is tageting or also other keywords that your site is about?

[Robert Charlton]

On an inner page, would you bold the keyword that it is targeting or also other keywords that your site is about?

Look at the text formatting of this current thread on WebmasterWorld. Aside from the heading and links up at the top... within the main copy, our usernames are bold; the post time and date are bold.

Below the thread, text that introduces sections of functionality is bold... eg, "Message Thread Options," "Global Options," "Read Messages," "This Forum," "Global...." And then the nav links down at the bottom are bold.

What's bold and what's not bold on this page are all purely graphic choices, to help guide the user... in this case, to separate and identify sections on the page. On other pages, bolding might be done for other reasons.

These choice were clearly not made for search engine targeting or optimization.

But the secret number really is that each keyword should be bolded 2.3 times. ;)

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 2:21 am (utc) on Oct. 30, 2008]

[webdude]

I thoight it was 2.7 :-/

[supafresh]

Bold fail.

[Shaddows]

Of course bold no longer works- but only because <b> is deprecated. Its all about the strong emphasis these days. Thats <strong>. For extra effect, you need the normal emaphasis too- thats <em>

Party like its 1999

^^^Just like that^^^

[BradleyT]

B isn't depricated - [w3.org...]

OP - work on your links, not your keyword density or your underlining or your bolding.

[dusky]

I once had "bolded" all text on news articles and left them like that for few weeks, the site suffered a drop in ranking, I realised it was a mistake. All was in bold, the news copy, headings, by-lines etc. At the time I was experimenting with a new design templates. Story short, I removed the bold except where it should be "emphasised", the site regained its rank 3-4 weeks later. What made me remove the bold, to start with, it does not make sense anyway, secondly if you are serving ads from the likes of Kontera, Vibrant media and similar, the ads would not appear on bold text, I was wondering why they were not appearing onsite, and that's what prompted me to remove the bold from the news articles and as a result ranking returned and ads were appearing.

[Shaddows]

BradleyT- damn it, I thought my post was unimpeachable on accuracy. If I'm mistaken about that, could it be that the whole post was wrong?

seriously though, why would you use <b> these days? Is there ever a good reason to prefer <b> over <strong> and indeed <i> over <em>

[jimbeetle]

Is there ever a good reason to prefer <b> over <strong> and indeed <i> over <em>

Sure, I use <b> and <i> for presentational elements as discussed above by Robert Charlton. I rarely have a use for <strong> but do use <em> for, well, emphasis.

[potentialgeek]

> On an inner page, would you bold the keyword that it is tageting or also other keywords that your site is about?

Be natural. Excess of any kind, including something as "innocuous" as bolding, is asking for a penalty.

That said, don't assume that something like bolding will improve ranking. If you do it for optimization, it's much more likely to get you a penalty than a SERP benefit.

That goes for most other on-page "optimization" tricks, too. Focus on titles and content; forget about optimizing most other stuff (tags, bold, italics, etc.).

p/g