The other Royal Wedding (MSN + DP)

If you are looking for Charles and Camilla you are in the wrong place. The wedding I am talking about is between MSN and DP.. OK + Hello magazine say its the wedding of the year..

Ok, let me get to the point, I have read alot of posts on here about high rankings in the new MSN.

Well, ALL of my signatures are ranking highly for their exact anchors (or very close). They are not the busiest terms, but usually have quite a high number of results. 1 out of 9mil, 2 out of 3 mil that kind of thing.

Most of them I have done very little offsite yet, other than put them in my signature and a few directory submissions. I have not even started using the Coop yet (i know!!)

My theory is this MSN is in love with Digital Point, literally (Sorry, Shawn, it seems to be an arranged marriage is on the cards).

The new sites in my signature were listed in MSN in about 48 hours (maybe less, I didnt check) and since then have seen instant rankings, that would (and will) have taken much longer in G.

I think their new criteria is:

1. Fresh results (regularly updated site) - even their search builder lets you choose how fresh you want your content.

2. Location specific - My .com rankings have all dropped, my .co.uk results have risen alot. UK hosting. Global (prob mainly US backlinks) - so I dont think the country your BLs come from matter. (The results are "total results" - unlike Google which cuts the index down when searching country specific).
I dont mind too much at the moment as the MSN traffic has increased reasonably (so has google.co.uk)

3. Anchor text, onsite and the other usual factors.

4. Fresh Backlinks - I suspect their is some kind of noticable stale factor..older links devalue (im not sure about this yet)

5. Anchor quantity has been devalued - I have higher rankings than some sites that have 50,000+ BLs vs my >500. By default I would not be able to beat them in G.


Personally, I am considering 2 sites, one US hosted and one UK. with different content. I believe it is going to get harder and harder to rank for each others countries..

I dont really like this situation; many many terms are global:SEO - I dont want advice from UK sites only - no offence.

I have noticed others experiencing the same kind of situation.

Does anyone have any definitive ideas on optimization strategies for the new msn or any other factors they think are/ will currently influencing their results ?

 

twice a day msnbot comes to my site, googlebot moved into my forums and dont pay any rent, its there 24/7 it used 170mb of bandwidth in the last 4 days, i had 37 googlebots at once in there, they are always there, but i only have pr2. i have talked to others that dont know about DP (shameless sods) but their site is also #1 on msn. so i dont think its DP, but i guess it helps, to get msnbot to look at your links fast.

 

Seems that way.. this site fits the bill, spiderable, fresh, full of content, high pr, high visitors, high rankings, all helps. I guess the UK competition is much smaller, so easier to rank well as well (although I have noticed it for a US client too)

 

I was wondering what the wife would say about the situation..