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HTML

Posted by Jerome Gentolia
Jerome Gentolia
5,167 Points

Impact of <strong> and <em> tags on SEO

What is the impact of <strong> and <em> tags on SEO Does it have any impact at all?

2 Answers

Michael Arends
Michael Arends
27,513 Points

Google treats text wrapped as strong and em as more important than plain text.

Source: http://www.cssnewbie.com/4-ways-css-can-improve-your-seo/#.Ul1um1CsjTo

Jerome Gentolia
Jerome Gentolia
5,167 Points

Thanks Michael, the link is very helpful!

Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points
Paul Graham
Paul Graham
1,396 Points

There is little to no evidence that em or strong tags affect SEO at all. The article Michael posted is from 2008. Any SEO article older than about a year should mostly be ignored as Google's algorithm is constantly changing. <b>/<strong> gaming killed Google from using these tags from any significant weight in the ranking algorithm.

This does not mean you shouldn't use them when they are correct and useful, it's just likely that it's irrelevant to SEO.