Sometimes search engine optimization experts get a little weird. They start focusing way too much on the details and often get in endless debates over little things that don’t matter. This actually drives me crazy. Which is why we try to be much more big picture oriented here at Ignite Visibility. That being said, SEO does have a very technical and precise aspect to it. So it is understandable why a couple SEOs might argue over HTML markup subtleties and how much they help SEO. One example of this is <strong> vs <b> html markup and <i> vs <em>. Both pairs of HTML do the same thing, but an SEO guy might feel that one allows for better rankings than another.
In this video, Matt Cutt’s from Google dives into this topic. Long story short, he believes they are both equal.