I've heard it said that you should use bold text for your headings because bold text may fare better in regards to search engine optimization (SEO). That is not entirely true. While bold text may indeed fare better you should actually use correct heading elements, <h1> ... &lt/h1>, <h2> ... &lt/h2>, <h3> ... &lt/h3>, etc. (there are six of them) for your page headings and sub-headings. These will fare even better still!

In the past the content in heading tags was rendered in bold text and each subsequent element set, ranging from h1 through h6, produced a size smaller font as shown here:

Headings and Titles

Headings and Titles

Headings and Titles

Headings and Titles

Headings and Titles

Headings and Titles

These days, with cascading style sheets (CSS) separating presentation from content, you can have your headings be any font weight (bold or not) and any font size. But the text enclosed in heading tags is still examined carefully by spiders and the correct use of heading tags assists in evaluating your page for indexing. The first three headings, using the correct heading tags along with appropriate CSS, may actually add to better placement over the example using just bold tags:

<h1>Headings and Titles<h1>

<h3>Headings and Titles<h3>

<h1>Headings and Titles<h1>

<b>Headings and Titles<b>

Note that by specifying the font size in the CSS for each of the tags in the four examples above the text is all the same size regardless of the heading tag used. Although we see the text in both the first h1 element and the second h3 element as the same size the search engine spider will see the first one as significantly more important than the second and weight it accordingly in indexing. We see the first one as bold text and the third one as normal text but the spider will rate them both as equally important first level headings.

Use headings where ever they are needed on your page and use sub-headings with heading tags numbered in accordance with the heading's importance. For example, use the h1 element for the main heading on the page. Use the h2 element for the next level sub-headings and the h3 element for the level below that, etc.

Good use of headings with the proper heading tags can add significantly to the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.