Don’t let the title of this article make you think that plain html is better than css. We all know css has it’s advantages when it comes to site design and styles throughout your site but don’t forget that header tags and bold font is like a treat for a search bot. So instead of making something .header in your css make sure you just style your header tags so that you can still wrap your keywords in header tags.
Here is a trick for all of you out there. Take a header tag that you don’t play on using let’s say <h1> and style it to look like the normal text in you site. Now when your writing your content and your keywords come up, wrap them in your <h1> tag. Your users won’t see a difference but the search engines will. Now some of you might be thinking that this sounds a little shady but I don’t think it is. Your are simply trying to imply that these words are more important than the rest without making your text look all crazy.
Now don’t over do it, maybe just a few headers here and there to make your point, but don’t do every instance of your keywords. I don’t think this is necessary for bold because bold makes your writing look better and drives home what you are trying to get across.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:50 am Using such tags is not only useful for search engines, but a good web developer has to consider visitors who may prefer to browse without styles, in which case and headings styled using css will appear simply as regular text. Recently many well known sites stripped away the css from their main pages to take part in a 'naked' demonstration of good markup/site design. It is a very good idea to use features such as those found in most modern browsers to view any site you develop sans styles to help those who turn css off, but it may also give you some clues on how to clean up your markup and optimise for the search engines.
July 29th, 2007 at 2:39 pm I think I might give this a try but with a class applied to the h1 tag so that it looks like normal paragraph text. Would it look bad with the styles turned off though? Maybe using bold with a class applied would be a good option as it wouldn't look too strange if the CSS was turned off. Time to experiment.