#1 in MSN - Was it me or Co-op?

I found one of my new pages is ranked #1 out of 132,872 results. There is a lot of syndicated content, Google Adsense ads, my internal links, and co-op links from Digital Point. This page is only about 2 weeks old.

http://www.aspiringgeek.com/rational/

So far MSN has only sent 20 visitors in the last four days but it is nice to see my page number one with IBM looking up at me. The term is Rational Unified Process and it describes IBM's enterprise software development process and tool$.

So is it my semi-pro SEO work or the co-op ads?

 

i'm positive, it's you made co-op work for you

 

132,872 results isn't much, doesn't take much to rank for that.

But now that you know how, aim for the good keywords...

 

We all rank above insanely influential sites from time to time, but usually for some random ass KW buried in the annals of their site.

Don't let it get to ya. It's easy to sit back and think things are only going to get better.

Usually when I beat a large site, I get the impression, "hey we didn't even try for that. You can run the race yourself i you want".

 

It's not what I'd call a competitive term, Microsoft are about to Relabel (and release a new version of) Rational, and the result is likely your clever use of the coop

Try ranking for:
Performance Testing
Functional Testing
Load Testing
Unit Testing

Rank yourself well on those terms, and you'll have a golden opportunity. The serious stuff sells for good money - companies like Mercury, Compuware, Impirix, Segue and others in the industry may pay handsomely for advertising.

Cheers,

JL

 

This wasn't a random KW. If you go to ibm.com, click on the Software for Growth image link, you'll see Rational as a link after DB2 and Lotus.

I am surprised none of the gazillion consultants, recruiters, and administrators didn't out rank me.

 

Maybe you should shoot for some more popular terms if this one came that easy

 

Definitely a legitimate keyphrase (and well done BTW), it's just not overly competitive. For example, while your keyword sees 132,000 sites in the serps, terms like performance/load/functional testing see around 10 Million sites in the serps.

Perhaps you should go for one of the terms I recomended. You may find an opportunity to monetize.

Cheers,

JL

 

say thanks to Shawn for this FREE tool.

 

I'm starting to think that msn is 60% about neighborhoods. seems like everyone on these forums is ranking well. We are all connected thru a powersource like this.
Same with my real estate forum. Real estate sites from new members are starting to rank now as well once they make a couple of posts in my forum. I don't think it is as much about meta tags as many make it out to be.

 

Alright John Loch, I'll follow your advise. Let see how this page works:

http://www.aspiringgeek.com/performance/

 

Good luck with it !

I'll be interested to see how it goes

Cheers,

JL

 

yeah I wasn't trying to sound mean.

I wish you the best of luck as well.

I just remember getting overexcited over some uncompetitive stuff.

the best KW I rank #1 for only about 1.2 mil and even that brings very little traffic. What I'm saying is it's easy to get ecstatic over such KWs, and its better to focus on targetting better ones. I'm trying for a more serious KW now, but its a struggle. Hopefully both of us will get into the major leagues some day.

 

If you get enough weight, the coop will get you to number 1 in MSN for even very competive keywords.

 

yep i agree.

happened to me and my friend - with virtually no seo on-page, just co-op links.

 

I have never joined the coop.
Seems I am missing out

 

Difficult to say if you will benefit for certain.

The weight in the coop for the same website flactuate wildly
everytime I validate so I really do not know if the coop is beneficial or my other seo efforts are paying off.

 

I agree, I also won't chance it with a site that has been well established for 5 years.

 

if we keep vaunting the coop network with claims like this the SE's, who no doubt do research into SEO mindset, are going to start trying to algo any benefit out of it if they can.

 

Sorry but having taken a brief look at that site there's 0% chance you'd get someone like me to actually convert. Have we lost all context people? What good is ranking highly, even for a very popular and competitive term if its not contributing in a tangible way to our business??? That page looks like straigth search engine spam to me.

Do you expect to see actual conversions?

It's hard to even know where you are trying to direct the user's attention.

Is there even original content on that page?