SolveYourProblem
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series
SEO Strategies for MSN
MSN
may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look
at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed
has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google
comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines
will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This
is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN.
The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results
for just about everything. If you can’t find it at Google,
can’t find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and you’ll find
something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.
It’s still quite easy to figure out what you need to do
to your site to rank highly at MSN. MSN generally
indexes every page that it can find anyway and is a pretty handy
search engine in that it is the third most popular out there
and it is also a nice one to foreshadow what may be happening
to your listings at Google in the not too distant future.
They’ve recently changed their algorithm, though, and everyone
wants to know how it works. Well, here are some answers.
MSN’s
ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as page content,
the number and quality of the sites that link to your pages,
and the site content, and keyword relevance. Keep in mind
that there are lots of differences between MSN and Yahoo
and Google. All search engine algorithms are similar, but
little differences can have big effects when it comes to
SEO. The nice thing about MSN is that its algorithm isn’t
as strict as those of Yahoo! and Google and is therefore
a very powerful SEO tool in and of itself.
Relevant
themes and topics are very important to MSN optimization,
and you should also consider keyword density – remember,
no keyword stuffing, as MSN explicitly says this is against
their rules. The general rule is that you should make sure
that there are key words in your title and then follow the
basic platform for key words. Put a few in a header at the
top of your page; scatter a few throughout the page including
several in the first and last paragraphs; finally, put a
couple of links that contain key words towards the bottom
of your page. These steps are common for all search engine
optimizations and should be a set process for every page
that you attempt to optimize. Complete this work before attempting
any other SEO procedures as this is the basis of SEO.
Links
are important, and maintaining good incoming links
with your keywords will get you good rankings. It’s very
important to get as many natural links as possible – providing
interesting and useful content can make this happen for you
with no extra work at all! You’ll seem completely natural
to MSN’s spider. These natural links are the basis of link
SEO. If you are trying to attain links you should first attempt
to attain these links from pages that would naturally link
to you but may not have heard of your site yet. After you
have done this you should go to directories and other sources
of links that may not be as obvious. First things first,
don’t mess up your search engine listings because of a bunch
of bogus links from unsuitable, questionable, or malicious
locations. These links can and will get you banned.
MSN
doesn’t allow you to pay to boost your site’s ranking,
but they do offer advertising. This advertising will allow
you to pay a certain amount for links in their “sponsored
links” boxes on the top and sides of each results page. The
value of these links depends on the demand for them. At any
particular time a sponsored link could become very expensive
by somebody bidding an outrageous amount for a link, or by
a large number of people trying to overwhelm a niche market.
MSN doesn’t update often, but when it does it often removes
links it believes to be out of date, so make sure you change
your site occasionally.
One thing that MSN likes a lot is well-formed HTML code,
with closed, valid tags. Watch out for broken links, and
make sure you have static URLs that don’t move around, and
contain your keywords.
