Help me with finding the reason.

I have recently noticed that MSN does not behave the same as it would. I need your help to come up with a theory.

My question is: Why some websites appear above mine while I have more links pointing to mine, more keywords on page, much better on page optimisation and keywords in URL. Some of the sites above me are newer and some are older. Some even are not home page while I have a whole site targetting a phrase.

If your site has a position whiting 2 to 20 and your problem is like mine, what reason would you suggest for this? Would you suggest that MSN has started to penalise massive link building?

Please notice that I am not looking for success stories but fail stories. And I am looking for real analysis not just assumptions.
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perhaps you have link from bad neighborhood or not as good as your competitors?

 

Perhaps your onpage optimization is more than needed and your keyword density is too high so MSN sees it as spammy rather than well optimized.

 

They have a completely new algorithm I believe

 

They did update the algo awhile back. Look at what others are doing to rank and see what your doing differently.

 

And this is what I am trying get help in this topic. I hoped perhaps others could come up with some educated theories.
I still haven't managed to find a pattern. Some sites above me have more backlinks and some less. Some more keyword some less, some with keyword stuffed domains some not.

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Domain plays a vital role when it comes MSN. As for their algo, I guess it's not done yet, they are still making changes. I have been noticing a few changes in MSN. They are far more slower now (actually I am facing old cache problems) and the search results are really shifting up and down

 

All I can pick out for those who rank well is keywords in the URL and Title with lots of inbound links.

 

Even I have experienced that keyword targetting done properly work quite well for gaining the rankings.
And Keyword in your Domain Name is just gold, for gaining MSN rankings!

 

maybe they are banning optimized sites

 

I strongly belive that having bad links can't affect you ranking. Why?
Well it's easy, then anyone could whipe out the competition by just linking
So I think you can rule out this one..
If you want someone to analyze it for you, you should give more info on your site

 

Use this tool - http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php

to compare the page strength of your site, and others!!

Then you will know why

 

Maybe they have a new filter that penalizes a site for over optimization. Like having your KW density too high.