Yep, they seem to really be paying attention to keyword density. My new site with barely over 100 backlinks (and those only coming form a small number of sources) is ranked #1 in MSN for it's keyword. It's nowhere to be seen in Google. And, the site that is currently ranked #1 google for that term with almost 3,000 backinks only ranks #3 in MSN, below my site!
Yes, I've seen similar results, but I'll tell you I think there's more to it than that. I think MSN does a "shuffle" of sites that rank high. Over the course of a couple weeks where I made little or no changes to my site it went from #26 to #12 to #1 on a key word just in the first few days. Then it went back down to #4 where it stayed for a couple days, then to #9 where it stayed for a couple weeks. After making a change to the title It went straight to page 7 a couple days ago, now it's GONE! However, another keyword where I was consistantly down in the double digit pages I'm now at #5 on page one just from that title change, and all I did was add one word. Go figure.
I thought I was making some inroads into a theory I had re: Google, about contextual copy on pages and a couple other things... anyway, it didn't work very well. But, and I don't know if it's the copy or not -- I put a lot of attention into anchor text also -- at msn I am 2 out of 3,613,894 in an extremely competitive area, the promotional products business. And I think I have only a dozen or so backlinks. I have never worked on that with that site. So clearly I do not think MSN puts nearly the emphasis on them as G does. Which is fine w/ me; it is irrelevant in my opinion at this point -- everyone knows about bl's, so everyone runs around getting links to their site in an artificial manner, simply for the seo, that defeats the credibility of using them to largely determine a site's quality & relevence. Just my opinion. Now I'm off to run the ad network on our site.
My site does very well in Google, but gets no respect from MSN. Since I rely mostly on content and not so much on links, maybe MSN is link-happy.
Yup, I launched a site on another IP and another domain where every page points to my primary site, using very specific keywords. (I will start using a keyword pool shortly, so each page uses a different keyword set.) My site as of today ranks #1 in a category with 5.8 million results and #3 for a category with 5.3 million results. Not too bad, I'd say. =) DS
I've ranked very well with MSN on many of my sites. For all the suggestions I've seen about SEO, such as page title, keywords, description, h1/h2 tags, using your keywords in your text...all those things, MSN seems to be rating well on them.
Please do post any learned knowledge for MSN. I want to make sure I start considering them as I grow my sites! Hank
#7 of 55,183,944 for contest #7 of 9xx,xxx for paris hilton as far as I can tell msn likes links whether internal or external. can't wait to get my coop weight back :]
I think someone needs to write some MSN tracking and reporting tools like the ones available for Google. I truly think the action is going to be on MSN over the next 6 to 9 months. It sure would be nice to have tools to monitor the results.
Yeah, it is just like Google's, mix up the search results enough to force most webmasters to buy ads. It is the same game everywhere.
Am sure it's some sort of game MSN are playing...... I have less than 50 backlinks and No 1 - (for one of my keywords) just need to think of some more keywords.... Ian
MSN is doing really well for real estate terms. Even though I have found that cloakers can still get past their algo check out Las Vegas Real Estate the number 1 and number 2 ranked websites are cloaking big time and also show up for every real estate phrase known. Even the search phrase real estate they are number 1 as well as homes, property and so on. This is one reason a lot of the SEs have to place these filters because of webmasters like this. The person doing this I know and he has already been ban from google and yahoo and now I guess MSN will be next. If MSN keeps producing good relevant results, google is in for a big market share loss.
This will happen for sure. Will there be an MSN API similar to Google, I hope so. A DP Keyword Tracker version for MSN would be wicked.
I would be willing to bet that MSN doesn't use meta keywords. I have a new site ranking: #7 of 2,743,078 for "paid directories" #1,2 of 614,119 for "best paid directories" Since the site is new, I just noticed that I had never updated the keywords and the word "paid" was not even included. I have noticed similar things on other pages.
I think MSN relies mainly on the following factors: Number of BLs (Doesn't matter how important the BLs are) Anchor text Title tags H1 text keyword density in the pages
My results support your analysis, although I have had some good results for new sites that do not have a large number of BLs
I think with Co-Op network, you can be on top for any keyword in MSN, very easily. i.e, anchor text is important i think.
Can't figure out the dang algo but I'm sure happy with it. My secondary domain that I can't for the life of me figure out how to redirect to the correct page within my site is #1 for the main keyword term "saltwater fly tying" and #2 for a very competive term "fly tying"(sneaky backlink) and the page that it is optimizing at the domain isn't even mean't for those keyword terms. Once I figure out how to do the redirect I will add it to my coop and don't think it will be long before I'm #1 for "fly tying". 1. Domain Relavance 2. Anchor Text ^^Seem to be the key players. My sites aren't even a month old and im deep in the sandbox for google. Hell I don't even think saltwaterflytying.net has more then 20 backlinks.