BOLD vs STRONG, EM vs ITALICS Which is Better
- Posted by B Jones on May 7th, 2008 - Comment on this Post »
The question of whether we should use <STRONG> tags vs <B> tags in one of our larger sites came up recently while we were implementing some changes, based on the recommendations of one of the SEO companies who are consulting with us (at my job).
One company recommended that we use <STRONG>, and not <B>, probably because it is what the WC3 recommends, however, we’ve been using the old bold <B> tag forever.
Being a little bit lazy (I really didn’t feel like making a mass change across a site of over 16,000 pages to change B to STRONG), and also a bit curious, because I could have sworn that I heard Matt Cutts say that it didn’t really matter which you use, I decided to do a little looking around.
It turns out that according to Matt and the actual Google engineers who weight the particular algorithm elements, <STRONG> and <B> are exactly the same when it comes to ranking and optimizing pages.
The exact same goes for EM vs ITALICS tags (<EM> and <I>), no difference at all.
I’d like to personally congratulate Google for “Keeping it Real”.
Also, if you’d like to hear it from the horses mouth, here you go…
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May 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Wheww thank god that they are the same. I use the tag and I too thought that google weighted the tag more.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
B and I it is then! Heck, they are less key strokes…I like it!
May 13th, 2008 at 6:12 am
How about Yahoo / Microsoft?
Stephan
May 15th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Thanks for the useful info. Since your on this html subject, how about some insight on the vs. the
Is there a search engine preference/benefit to limit the and use the more often?
May 15th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
That last post didn’t show the html in question. Let’s try this. I write it out. The Paragraph html vs. the Break html.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:08 am
The Paragraph html vs. the Break html.
its cool thank you.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Little Confused about Duplicate Contents from what I have read on sites:
1st, why would wordpress.org, as an blogging engine, create duplicates within one blog!!! Wordpress should know that it is not a good/right and practical way.
Perhaps, some themes might be codded wrongly, then I understand.
Permalinks: my_blogname.com/year/month/date/post_title
The original post will always have the same url, even if the post (not page) is listed under dozens of categories, or can be found by navigating the archives. Where/when does then duplicate posts originate.
I hope what I have written above is not totally utter non-sense, as I am newbie at all this. I have seen people recommending using the “noindex” stuff, such as for categories folder within the wordpress.
Purpose for asking this dilemma is because my new theme is under-development, and soon the blog will be completely hosted on my own wordpress.ORG engine, as it is currently on wordpress.COM. I simply want to be sure that I do not end up having “duplicate contents” within a single blog, hence somehow being penalized, not necessarily from search engines, but even as simple as navigation speed, etc.
An explanation on this will be much appreciated. Thank you and looking forward for your explanation.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Thank you very much for looking this up. I was getting sick of hearing wheezy junior engineers getting up in my face about this because they had their opinion on it. I’ll make sure to quote this the next the smack is tried to put down upon me. Power to the B and the I!
Hudin
June 21st, 2008 at 6:34 am
the coding would be more compact then with <b> and <i> in instead of <strong> and <em></em></strong></i></b>
July 7th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Thanks for write about this. And I always use B and I tag more simple in writing it