<STRONG> or <B>

[Breckenridge Real Estate]

Some of my link partners request that I use a <STRONG> tag around their anchor text. Others request a <B> tag.

Which do you expect is more effective? How about using both?

[ResaleBroker]

Check out this article.

[Breckenridge Real Estate]

Thanks for pointing out this article, it is interesting reading. However, it does not answer my question. By “effective” I meant in terms of the SERP benefit of the link.

[ResaleBroker]

Out of the gate, IMO, no difference.

[Jenny Barclay]

We have tested this many times in varying circumstances and cannot detect any difference.
Go with the flow

[Breckenridge Real Estate]

We have tested this many times in varying circumstances and cannot detect any difference.
Go with the flow

Jenny, do you mean no difference between <B> and <Strong> or between either or both and neither?

I read on another forum that there is in fact no benifit to using either tag.

[webmaster]

I would not even bother, you are likely going to get the odd response back that you are interupting their page fomatting, and then you will have to be like "ok just leave it out" not worth the time, especially sinse as far as I have tested there is no benefit to having an IBL bolded using ANY tag.

[Jenny Barclay]

With G no difference, but pages that disappear in G during our testing stay at No.1 in Yahoo.

[webmaster]

pretty hard to show causation though isnt it Jenny? I mean correlation sure - but the same can likely be reproduced without having your inbounds bolded. I have lots of sites that stay strong in Yahoo when G does odd things, and none of them have any bolding on their links.

[Jenny Barclay]

Absolutely.
As our interest is solely the G algo we have no testing procedures in place for Yahoo.
However it does seem ludicrously easy to get No.1 in Yahoo, but over here there is virtually zero traffic.