Guide to new MSN Optimization.

Lately i've been only optimizing for MSN.


Few things i noticed: In order of importance:

1. Back links with anchor text. Relavance of links seems to matter very little. Make sure to use different anchor text to target different kw's. Have one page that ranks for 4 terms.

2. Title ( a good title is a must).
3. H1 ( makes a difference between 20th position and 5th position).
4. H2 (same as h1, but should be used with secondary kw'ds).
5. KW density that works for me is around 5-8%
6. A good tip is to put the title of the article at the bottom of the page in bold. Helps alot from my experience.
7. img alt's with different kwp's make a difference as well.
8. SPELLING it seems msn is very keen on spelling. I mis-spelled some words and got dropped few pages down, fixed it, got up again.
9. Correct meta usage and code. I see that a pages with coding mistakes can take huge dumps in terms of ranking.
10. Good linking structure ( make sure msn sprider has easy access to your pages. It doesnt seem to like to go deeper then 3 levels so make sure to have a good sitemap).

This will probably bring you up-top. One thing is bl's are extremely important. The only thing that keeps me from getting number one on my keywords is the amount of BL's my competitor has ( 120 vs 1500)

(if you guys knew all this already sorry)

 

Very Helpful

 

You left out IIS based servers for the hosting of the website. Servers running Microsoft software seem to get the sites a little edge in MSN...

 

Is that really true?

 

That's very interesting. I'm doing fairly well in MSN right now. I think I'm going to try some of these things and see what happens.

 

From what I have seen in my limited amount of testing yes. There is a thread about this on the board. I tested this 'theory' about 4 weeks ago. I moved a site that was doing relatively poor in MSN from a Linux based server to a Microsoft based server and I have seen a steady rise since.

PS: I have also lost traffic from G, but that could be as a result of switching and downtime, but it is happening...

 

Thanks for the tips I need to check them out. Something weird with MSN, my blog ranks better in a keyword than the website I want to rank with taht keyword.

The only mention of that keyword on my blog is a link to my website... strange

 

Excellent post. Although I place my main keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags. I use one H1, one H2 and multiple H3s. I have seen some good results from this.

 

A very important factor is server location. I have a UK based site ranks very well in MSN.co.uk (used to rank well in MSN.com) now slipping on .com. Not 100% sure about the IIS theory I have one apache, one IIS, not noticing much difference. Also, Fresh backlinks and fresh content help keep your ranking up

 

no offense NewComputer, but i need to see some proof, not to mention a clean test.

i don't buy that at all.

 

Although, once MSN have market share I would exect them to do that, I just think it would be unwise for them to do it so early.

 

Is this true too?

 

I am sure. It makes a big difference. I have seen 5 or 6 examples of this. If you want MSN.com get a US host. If you want MSN.co.uk then get a UK host.
I think this is only going to get worse as well. Not sure how it works for very big sites with multiple mirrors in different countries etc. I watched these changes when the new msn was launched

 

Fair enough, my 'experiment' was nothing more that speculation by someone else that I respected the opinion enough to try. The site in question was doing fairly well in G and non existent in MSN. When I switched servers it was about 6 days before MSNbot came and started indexing and placing pretty well to start (within the top 60). Now, after about 4 weeks it is in the 15 and I have done nothing but switch servers. On a side note, G has dropped the site from 40 to around 390. Traffic from MSN goes up, traffic from G goes down.

Now, I am in know way saying switch all your sites to MS servers, this was just something that someone else said was happening, I tried it out and it worked. I have not moved any other sites (well, 1 other one) but I am not doing anything crazy. It was just an observance. I probably should not have posted what I did originally...

 

is the site in your sig?

 

No, I don't want any additional backlinks etc...

 

My backlinks exactly refelect my MSN ranking... Try the first 1 in .com and the other 2 in .co.uk. Sites 1 and 2 I have done very little link building so far

If you try them in the opposite engine they dont do so well

 

I rank in the top 10 for several keywords on MSN and I'm on a Linux server...i'm no where to be seen anywhere else as the site is very new. I would be hard pressed to think that this had any affect.

 

If you think about it though Wendy, why wouldn't MSN (MS) want to give more creedence to those sites using it's high cost server options? I am not saying they are, but I am not the only one who thinks like this...

 

I used to think the same way, as my servers are IIS and I rank well in MSN. However, I still can't explain why a topic on my phpBB board(running on Linux) is #3 for "E-Bay" on MSN:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=e-bay&FORM=QBHP


--
Derek