To what benefit is bold/italic to SEO

[pow-wow]

Is there any subtle gains using bold and italic to emphasize keywords and key phrases on a page? I have read that this can contribute to improve link popularity in Search engine optimization. Is it true?

[OldDarkstarAccount]

Link popularity ...on page optimization. Different things.

Bold, italic, underline are to be used on pages to emphasize keywords.

[OldWelshGuy]

Yes words in bold will help theme a site, but as for pure ranking, not really as the affect is so low.

[OldDarkstarAccount]

To theme a site, along bold and underlining words, you can link for an authority site in your domain. But for onpage optimization, even if the effect is low, it may have an importance as later. You build a house using many small bricks...

[OldWelshGuy]

Absolutely DS. You should use bolding and italicising normally, that way the iomportant words will be those used. Build for people and it will work for search engines.

[espmartin]

Just make sure you use the semantically correct tags for them:

YES :

ITALIC: <em>Puts "emphasis" on what you write</em>
BOLD: <strong>Puts a "strong emphasis" on what you are writing.</strong>

NO :
ITALIC: <i>Stands for "italic"</i>
BOLD: <b>Stands for "bold"</b>

The difference in the YES vs. NO above is simple. The YES tags show
semantic relevance to the content, and therefore are NOT presentational.
The NO tags are pure HTML presentational tags - which are depreciated.

[pow-wow]

Thanks espmartin for this good explanation!