Thread: Use of capital letters

I am writing articles for my site in US English. So far I used Upper Case for the initial letters of all keywords in the articles only and not for other words (except for the first word of the sentence and names of course).

Do keywords with initial capital letters have any advantage SEO wise or does it look too spammy? What do you pros out there recommend?

I would say that it can enhance your article and highlight certain things. of course, bolding can do that for you as well. as to a seo benefit ... I doubt it.

found this in the net :

internet ethics.

i. using no caps at all, like this sentence, is a casual way of conversing. be it in a forum, p2p chat, irc or even personal blogs.

ii. using capital letters for certain words is a means to emphasize the word, like THIS. it is the SAME with underlining the words.

iii. using all caps is considered shouting, also associated to rude behaviour.

iv. using capital letters at the beginning of each sentence as well as names, titles and so on means u're very formal and likely to be too old for the internet.

v. uSinG cApiTaL leTtErS ON wEIrd lEtteRS iN tHe sEnTenCe lIke ThiS Is jUst PLaIn iDioTic.
*

Thanks guys. I'm not sure what to do yet but I will probably leave it like it is for now.

Capitalization offers no benefit for SEO.

Matt Cutts once indicated that there was a slight benefit with words in bold, but that tends to look awkward when bolded words are in the middle of a paragraph.

Originally Posted by TopDogger

Capitalization offers no benefit for SEO.

Matt Cutts once indicated that there was a slight benefit with words in bold, but that tends to look awkward when bolded words are in the middle of a paragraph.

I'm usually staying away from using what Matt says as a guideline, but that could be right. I would however not resort to just highlighting keywords, but rather important passages containing keywords as a whole.

I suspect he was referring to titles using the bold or strong tags.

I too am unsure if it holds any value, but like you even i have the habit of Capitalizing the initial alphabets of every word in my keywords, e.g. 'Seo Secrets', or 'Dog Food', etc...

To be honest it kind of looks a bit spammy to have random words'(from the visitor point of view) initial letters capitalized.

Originally Posted by Loko

I am writing articles for my site in US English. So far I used Upper Case for the initial letters of all keywords in the articles only and not for other words (except for the first word of the sentence and names of course).

Do keywords with initial capital letters have any advantage SEO wise or does it look too spammy? What do you pros out there recommend?

No, it will not look spammy, but it may look a little Strange. Using such a method is not the 'norm' for putting emphasis on words and could cause a bit of Confusion with the readers (though bots will likely ignore it). Chances are the people reading the article will see it as Nothing more then Random capital letters and will throw them off in concentration while reading it.

You have to remember the Golden Rule of SEO content writing - write for your readers first and the search engines second.

If you're doing something because you think it will look good to the search engines (even if it's awkward and confusing for your readers), it's not going to help you from an SEO standpoint. Stick to writing normally (like only capitalizing words that are supposed to be capitalized). Capitalizing keywords doesn't make them easier to spot for the spiders. But it will strike your readers as odd...and if your readers are confused, they're not going to stick around to see what else you have to say.