Text attributes – bold, italics, and underline

Emphasizing text with the use of bold and underline has long been known to have a marginal effect on ranking. Search algorithms follow predictable logic—do the elements of a web page serve to reliably indicate the subject of the web page, and if so, to what degree? Text attributes do tend to indicate the subject and context of a page but rarely to a great degree. Rightfully, text attributes are not given much weight. Again, this technique is best used as a supplement to other stronger ranking factors.

This technique is commonly misused by inexperienced webmasters. While the effect of the technique is slight, overzealous designers often employ the technique on dozens of phrases on a web page. This technique will yield little to no effect, and will almost certainly undercut your user experience.

The best practice is to employ text attributes for a maximum of two phrases per web page—your primary keywords only.