Good Formatting and SEO

“Bold the important keywords!”, or “Use H1 tags for the important things!” they say. And they are right… but as with all things SEO, there are guidelines to do it right!

It does not mean to bold every instance of your keywords within an article! It does not mean to stuff keywords into H1 tags or overdo!

What it means, is to naturally use Heading tags for the important phrases through your page. Use keywords naturally within those tags.

Bold important thoughts - this does not mean keywords, it means the bits throughout the page that are the most important concepts. Typically, those will naturally contain some keywords of value, if the piece is written well.

Bolding and using heading tags (whether they are h1, h2, etc), indicate that the text inside those areas is more important. So in order to use them right, you should make sure that the information in them really IS more important, to the READER. Do that, and search engine optimization naturally follows.

Keep it natural, and remember the first rule of SEO - write for people first. Format for people first, as well. Use logical layouts, use bolding, colors, lists, indents, or heading tags to guide the reader through the page in a logical and easily understandable way. Then go back over the things you are drawing attention to, and see whether they contain natural keyword usage.

Formatting is a useful tool in helping search engines recognize the key concepts on a page, but like all SEO tactics, will hurt more than help if you abuse it.