I have a 6 month old proxy site that ranks very well on Google for some top keywords. It is PR 4 and has over 10,000 backlinks. However, it ranks very low on Yahoo for the same keywords. On MSN is does a bit better, but not nearly as good as on Google. How can I boost my rankings on these search engines?
Start spamming No seriously, MSN (and Yahoo to some degree) care less about the quality of sites linking and more about pure quantity of keyword rich links. Directory submissions, article submissions and buying sitewide links in the buy/sell forums are a few ways to get a large number of links with your exact keyword in them.
Yahoo places a lot of emphasis on meta tags (keywords & description), the title of the page, and inbound links to your site with the keywords you want to rank highly for. Both Yahoo & Google place a high emphasis on keyword density (aka site content). So if you want to rank highly for the keyword "dog", you would want to have this word used repeatedly throughout your site. Just make sure you use it in good context. Don't Spam! The 1st 500 pixels of your site should contain the keywords you want to rank highly for. I recommend using the <h1> tag for one keyword you want to rank highly for (and only one, again don't spam).
Is there a seperate sort of search engine optimization for msn and yahoo or is it the same as google?
From what I've seen, there are many similarities between how you would optimize for Google and how you would optimize for Yahoo or MSN. There are few differences as well. Yahoo & Google both place a high value on keyword density (content) and on back links. Yahoo likes meta tags, Google really doesn't. Both like the title of a web page. There are more similarities than differences. If you optimize for Google first (which you should), then you will already be well on your way toward optimizing toward Yahoo or MSN or any other search engine.
with 10k backlinks you should be fine with Yahoo. can you post your url here so so we can and give furthers suggestions?
From my own experiences, 1. Yahoo like page with content updated and not pay attention on keywords in url a much. MSN love new pages and concentrate on new fresh page with on-page optimization. Google love page with value content whether it update or not. 2. All se's love links. Google pay most attention on link from relevant sites but not show their count. Yahoo show their full scale counts on links but don't give important on links like Google, they look close on old age of incoming links and pay less important for inner link, even it's from a good page. MSN try to make their standard of link but I think it's useless, links on them will be count if they see the links come form their own authority site lists (my opinion only)
Google is the most searched search engine, so just keep doing what you are doing to get even higher rankings in Google. The reason I say this, is if you chaange your strategies to rank higher in msn & yahoo, you could end up with less rankings in google, resulting in less overall traffic. As I said Google will gets most traffic.
Yahoo and MSN give more priority on contents so create a content using your targeted keyword in a way that may not look keyword spamming.