Bold and Italic Tags

I’ve read some of the threads regarding styles etc. I use bold and italics to highlight keywords but, as i use website auditing seo software, i’ve noticed that the html tags for these isn’t in the source so isnt recognised as being bold or italicised, at least, by my software. Is this by design or am i missing something? I understand the H tags and P are most relevent but, unless i’m terribly outdated, isnt using the B and I tags still a thing for SEO?

Over the last few years this topic has been debated to no end, but from where I set I think the days of using bold and italic text to gleam some sort of rank-advantage via SEO are over.

This article, one of many on the internet, says it all - Are Bold And Italic Keywords Important? - Deeho SEO

I actually don’t have a clear idea of whether bold/italic help at all. I hadn’t noticed that Sparkle doesn’t generate a <b> or <i> tag, and while I understand the reason (there’s no specific concept of bold or italic, only of a font family, weight or of a typographical feature such as the slant), we should do a better job in creating tags semantically where it makes sense.

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Thanks guys. I use SEO Powersuite, it has given me pretty good results in the past. As far as I can tell the important tags are the headings, bold and italic. I don’t think it’s a game changer as Flaming Fig said but it would be nice to have the option.

Now i’ve got Sparkles’ styling system down I have to say it’s a great philosophy. Definitely reduces workload. Great work!