In a continuous search of finding ways to provide aid in creating more opportunities for the page rankings to improve on, another little detail has been unearthed and confirmed by Google’s very own, John Mueller, who clarified that bolding words alongside other important points mentioned on a paragraph do help with SEO and generating better ranks.
In a video from November 12 where John talked about SEO, the point came up. He’d said,“So if you want to kind of like simplify it to to one word answer. Does bolding important points on a paragraph help the SEO? Yes it does.” near the end of the video around the 40:10 timestamp.
The question proposed was meant more for clarification and confirmation than it was for anything else. Apparently there had been an argument on whether or not bolding important parts in a paragraph would boost the page’s SEO.
Does bolding important points on a paragraph help the SEO?
His reply explaining the matter is fairly easy to grasp. In accordance to John, the usual checklist to examine a webpage includes looking at the emphasised parts. These emphasised parts include headings on top of the page, sub-headings as well as content that is bolded or emphasised within the text displayed on the page.
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?
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) November 12, 2021
To quote his exact words from the video, “So to some extent that [bolding] 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, this topic here. And usually that aligns with what we think the page is about anyway so it doesn’t change that much.” This gives us insight into how to aptly emphasise the topic the webpage is created to cater for.
He also went on to point out that if one has the idea of bolding the entire page under the impression that it will boost rankings and trick Google into thinking it is the most important one, it will bear no fruition. You might as well leave the entire page plain. At its core it will seem as though nothing is bold since it all seems the same. For best results taking a handful of sentences or phrases within the page to highlight the important points is the right path to go down.
A little more meaning is given to the semantic HTML when proper markup is used for the page.
He concluded it by saying,“Does bolding important points on a paragraph help the SEO? Yes it does.” Giving us another trick to hide under our sleeve to build an efficient webpage that gains the most traction.
Furthermore, he went on Twitter to relay that these won’t make the rankings skyrocket but it certainly will aid in understanding the page better. “If you have 5 “SEO-points”, what should they be used for on this page?” In reference to the above matter, he’d tweeted to think of these as guidance for the page.
