I'm getting some "Insight" about http://www.candle-fundraising.org. On the Insight Tab, under Insight Breakdown, there is another tab for "Text Emphasis." It has all the <i> occurrences on the page. After looking at the page, I saw that they all occur in the code generated by Menu Builder.

Is this an SEO issue?

I see that Insight wants 'strong' instead of bold, and 'em' instead of italics on certain key words in order to make them more emphasized. I have never seen anything in e.g. Google webmaster tools, SEO that they have that as a criteria, but you never know.

I haven't seen anything either, but you never know. I figured it was good to ask.

Many SEO's think that bold and italics make a difference, but I have never found analytical data to back it up.

http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

Using 'em' and 'strong' make ones site more compliant with what is considered current best practice, to separate semantics from presentation. Could be that simple. Who knows?