I'm not familiar with what you are doing exactly, but I would first try just removing the <strong>
tag to make the escape is needed. By that I mean see if <strong>
or <strong>
works to make sure you are on the right track.
I believe the source of the issue is that it appears you are trying to match many >
rather than the actual contents between the tags. Try using .*?
(or [^<]*? if you know there will be no other tags within the tags) instead.