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Underline (and bold, italicize) affect on SEO

by DeskCoder
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
(Yeah, I spelled (e)ffect wrong, but I can't change it)

So I bought the Easy WP SEO plugin, just as a quick checklist of things I need to double check before I publish an article. I have tweaked the heck out of it so far, like I think 1% keyword density is plenty.

Now the underline is what is really getting to me. I am developer/designer by trade, and underling any word that's not a link is a big design no-no. It looks like a link, so people will try to click it, but it does nothing.

I hate doing on-site seo, so I try to make the most of my on-page seo. Am I missing anything by not underlining my keywords?
#affect #bold #italicize #seo #underline
  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    What that plugin is recommending is what I'd call over optimization. Yes it's good to bold or italicize or underline, but doing it in every single post for the same string of keywords is stupid.

    Do what comes natural. If it makes sense to bold a group of words then do it. If it looks forced then don't it.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkvana
    I have ranked thousands of pages without any need for underlining, bold, italics etc.

    Like the poster above me said, if you feel the need to do it for stylistic reasons than go for it but otherwise don't worry about it. The most important thing you should focus on is page layout and making attractive pages. Google is looking for quality > optimization these days.
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  • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
    You guys are right. It has always felt unnatural to me, I guess I just wondered where it came from, and if it was some kind of magic bullet.
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  • Profile picture of the author GyuMan82
    The value of things like bold, italics, underline etc. are minimal. You are not missing out by not doing it.
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  • Profile picture of the author C Rebecca
    Search engine bots are color blind... They cannot read colors, italics, bold or underlines, unless they have any functionality attached with them.
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    These tags are NOT so important for your on-page SEO tactics, you should pay a greater attention to title and meta tags, H1 tags and also alt/title
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