MSN Search Position

I have to say I'm really happy with the MSN Beta. Two days ago my shopping site was on page 11 in the serps for my top key phrase. Yesterday it was in the middle of page 6. This morning it's at the very top of page 4! The question is, how good a position is that? Obviously it's not too bad, certainly better than google and yahoo where I'm not even in the top 100, but how good is it really? How much of an increase in traffic should I expect, if any? So far I haven't seen anything. Is anyone else out there experiencing the same kind of results with MSN?

 

My results in MSN Beta are down a little overall, No one can tell you about the traffic without knowing the search terms

 

ive found im on page 1 for 2 search terms
and page 2 for 1 search term on search.msn.com

to be honest ive not really noticed any great increase in traffic although for the 1st time ever ive actually had someone get to my site from msn (only 1 person) but i suppose its a start once the new search engine has been implamented properly i should get an increase

 

The search term is exactly the same as the first link in my sig. "Online Shopping" is HUGE in the online shopping space. It's by far the biggest phrase on google, overture, and pretty much everywhere else as far as I can tell.

 

I just blogged about the fact that my MSN referrer stats are up today to 33%. I couldn't be happier about that. However, my rankings are generally top 5, so I'm not sure page 4 will get you the same numbers. Still, it is encouraging for you and if you can improve your rankings some, you might have a ton of traffic headed your way.

 

MSN is gradually feeding searches to the new MSN search database by geographic region on test. This has been going on for a month or two now while they tweak it.

While the results are good for many, they are full of spam IMO, and it tells me that MSN is not quite ready to compete with the big 2.

In reply to the question posed, top of position 4 is the same as bottom of page 4000, no one is going to see you.

I have a site I have been playing with, it was #3 for a term, and was getting abot 3000 visits a month, I dropped it a few positions, and it went to 9, I got about 250 a month. I dropped it again to #14, and it is getting less than 20 a month (from search). The site gets a lot of visits from the links in place, I am talking about search referrals here.

The more competitive, and the better the serp, the less chance you have of getting traffic from page 2, as the searcher finds what they need on page 1.

Have to say that IMO 'online shopping' is a crap search phrase, and I wouldn'y optimise for it in a hundred years (sorry). How many people search for it? those that do are probably school kids and students doing assignments. people search for the name of the product, and a qualifier in general. eg 'buy widgets' or 'widgets shop' 'or 'shop for widgets' another point here is that most people search for the plural even though they are looking for one. People search for 'properties for sale in xxx' far more than 'property for sale in xxx'.

 

It's true that "online shopping" isn't the best phrase out there, but it's so big I can't ignore it. When I do my SEO I generally use it in concert with a product type, "dresses", and/or a name brand, "Versace" etc. I still have some work to do there, but it's getting better. For instance, if you do a search on "online shopping cavalli" I'm #1, or at least I was last time checked. Still, I have to say that of the search terms that are finding me, almost all of them are name brands and I am trying to find the best ways to oprimize for them.

So what you're saying is if I'm not on page 1 I'm pretty much screwed. That figures. I can remember when people used to tell me "if you can get within the first three pages you're set." I'm not sure how valid that is anymore. I'm not going to say that relevance is up to speed either, even in google I'm finding that for a lot of my keywords the first few hits are, for the most part anyway, crap.

Actually, if you look at brand names, take "Larry Levine" for instance, it shows up in my stats as a hit from a google search. I've done that search to see where I come out. I got to about page 12 or 13 and stopped there. Not much point going any further, heck, not much point even going that far. In any case I think I need to really opimize more for those brand names and focus more on words like clothes and fashions, (note the ARE the plural forms, you're right, they do a lot better). The more I think about it the more it's becoming clear that Online Shopping is great for anchor text, but as far as a keyword goes it's probably too generic.

 

I am #1 for a competitive keyword I am targeting (almost 23 million results).

How many visitors has that keyword sent to my site? Not even one.

MSN is a pile of BS

 

I'm quickly coming to the same conclusion. Being #1 only counts if someone is actually using the thing. Although I must say, I did get my first, one and only, hit from MSN about half an hour ago. "Very impressive."

 

I found that MSN's link: tool has uncovered 2x the amount of links that either yahoo or alltheweb has.

Google: 29 backlinks
Yahoo : 220 backlinks
both MSN and MSN beta show over 500 backlinks!

what happened? MSN and Yahoo have always returned roughly the same amount of BL's in the past. Is MSN beta not beta anymore? The # of BL results from MSN beta and MSN are identical.

 

I saw the same thing the other day. MSN was reporting over 600 bls. BUT, when I started browsing through the pages it ended at page 7. I ended up only haveing about 64 bls at that time. It's up now close to 100, but don't let that initial number fool you.

 

As much as I love the results I see in the Beta, I am very disappointed as to how easy it seems to garner those spots. What I mean is, the sites that are uber-optimized are posting at the top. Not the most relevant, but the most SEO'd. One of my sites I have optimized two ways. 1 is for local searches that I should definitely rank #1 for as I am the most relevant for those terms, and the other is just generic SE optimization of keywords. For which I am not the most relevant. I post #1 in the beta MSN for both. Google has me number 1 for the local and barely in the top 200 for the other, which I believe is how it should be.
We will see February 1st how this all unfolds.....

 

Apparently MSN is welcomed by good SEOs.
I am an amateur and just started, so first of all I don't have many BLs, and secondly I can't be that good, there's still so much to learn.

MSN shows great results for those who happen to be good and experienced SEOs bad ones for me instead.

I wonder if this is what MSN wanted as usually it's a bit of a soft and clever battle between SEs and SEOs to stay ahead, and maybe MSN will soon want to reconsider its algorythm to make it more user and less SEO friendly!

Obviously I have nothing at all against SEOs from which I am actually trying to learn!

It's just the first conclusion I come to after MSN NEW has consolidated all over the world, apparently.

 

I have several sites doing great in the beta. The great thing about it right now is that once you have a page ranking it spiders so frequently and reindexes accordingly that you can see positive results from smart page construction the next day. On the downside I'm not getting any visits due to this great ranking for sites that aren't in widely searched areas. But, on sites whose focus is in pretty competitive keywords (I don't mess around with the most competitive terms), MSN is nosing up toward the top of my referrer list.

 

How's that working out for you? I've been considering leaning a lot more on less compeditive keywords but I'm not sure what kind of return I'll get for it. Of course, if I'm ranked in the top 10 for 1000 searches it beats the hell out of being on page 100 for 100,000 searches I'll bet.

 

Depends on how frequently the phrase is searched. If its a very popular phrase and is searched alot (and likely has alot of competition in the SERPS) than moving from page 11 to page 4 is pretty significant.

However, if its anything other than a very, very popular search term I would say this is pretty meaningless traffic-wise. Generally I don't even consider anything after page 3 as even being on the radar, and even that is only for real popular terms. Page 1 you'll have a shot at 100% of the traffic, maybe 50% on page two, and maybe 10% of the people will glance your way on page 3. Then factor in the likelihood of them clicking your site (maybe 10-20% each page or so) and you are left with something like 1% best case scenario as your share of the traffic with a page three listing. And that, IMO, is probably a best case scenario at the top of page 3 with a compelling title tag.

In short, the first 3 pages are key. Page 1 is many many times better than 2, and 2 moreso than 3. After page 3 its all just peanuts of the original volume you are fighting for.

Check your logs and see what you are getting for that term.

 

Yes, right on, and infinitely so. I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

Page 100 = zero traffic
Page 50 = zero traffic
Page 10 = virtually zero traffic
Page 5 = very, very minimal traffic
Page 3 = a little traffic
Page 2 = some traffic
Page 1 = very good traffic

(all proportional to the number of times such term is searched)

 

I am also ranked well in this.

 

Are you #1 in the beta or the current? If you are #1 in beta, just be patient until it goes live Feb. 1, then you should see traffic. I am getting traffic from both.

 

It works great, there's a lot of only semi-competitive commercial keywords where the competition is not employing very much or very effective SEO.