Google’s John Mueller confirmed that bolding important text in paragraphs can help your website’s SEO because it allows Google to better understand the content.
This was stated in the Google Search Center SEO office hours Hangout recorded on November 12, 2021.
Submit a question asking about the benefits of using bold text.
Is this purely a style choice? Or it can also be used for SEO purposes?
Mueller made it clear that it does help SEO.
However, its level of help is related to the rest of the content on the page.
The next section will detail what this means.
Google’s John Mueller on using bold text for search engine optimization
In answering this question, Mueller mentioned Video from Matt Cutts, a former Google employee This topic has been mentioned before.
“This is something that comes up from time to time. Actually, I double-checked before the meeting and Matt Cutts made a video, I think, around 2012, or about the bold and powerful stuff on the page.”
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I went back to watch the video and found that Cutts didn’t actually talk about the SEO meaning of the bold text.
Would this make this news unique to Mueller?
Cutts’ videos are more related to with It is related to the use of labels and whether there are differences between them.
There is no difference, but it is not the focus of this discussion.
As it is related to SEO, Mueller said that bold text can add extra value to the page.
Google’s crawler looks for text in bold or italics to understand the important content on the page.
Mueller added that Google can usually figure out what is important on its own, but the bold text makes the information clearer.
“So, usually we do try to understand the content on the page, and then we look at different things to try to figure out what is actually emphasized here, including things like the title on the page.
But it also includes the actual bold or emphasized content in the page text. So to some extent, this does have a little extra value, because it clearly shows that you actually think this page or this paragraph is about this topic.
Usually this is consistent with what we think of the page, so it won’t change much. “
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The SEO benefits of bold text are relative
Mueller clarified that the value of the bold text is relative to the rest of the content on the page.
Some bold text fragments throughout the article can send a stronger signal to Google. But bolding all the text on the page does not add any value at all.
“The other thing is, to a large extent, this is relative within the page. So if you say, okay, I will just make my entire page bold, and then Google will consider my page the most important Then, by making everything bold, essentially nothing is bold, because they are all the same.
However, if you use some sentences or words in the whole page to show that this is really important to me, and then bold them, then it is easier for us to say that there are a lot of texts here, and this may be one of them on this page The most important point, we can give it more value.
Essentially, this type involves all the content of semantic HTML, and by using appropriate markup for the page, you can give the page more meaning. From our point of view, this is good. This helps us understand the page better. “
Mueller concluded his response with a clear statement about the SEO value of bold text.
“So if you want to reduce it to a one-word answer, does it help SEO with the emphasis on a paragraph, yes. It does help us understand that paragraph or page better.”
Hear Mueller’s full response in the video below:
Featured image: marleyPug/Shutterstock
