SEO Tips for MSN

The only way to keep up with the latest about SEO is to constantly stay on the lookout for new information. If you read everything you find about SEO, it won't take long for you to become an influential authority.

MSN may be the most complete search engine out there. It seems to me that every web site that I look at in order to find the number of pages that it has listed has the following fallout: MSN has the most results, Google comes in second, Yahoo! comes last. Other search engines will generally fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo! This is a result of some very extensive work by the team and MSN. The beautiful thing about MSN is that you can find results for just about everything. If you can’t find it at Google, can’t find it at Yahoo! head on over to MSN and you’ll find something even if it is nothing more than a forum posting.

It’s still quite easy to figure out what you need to do to your site to rank highly at MSN. MSN generally indexes every page that it can find anyway and is a pretty handy search engine in that it is the third most popular out there and it is also a nice one to foreshadow what may be happening to your listings at Google in the not too distant future. They’ve recently changed their algorithm, though, and everyone wants to know how it works. Well, here are some answers.

MSN’s ranking algorithm analyzes factors such as page content, the number and quality of the sites that link to your pages, and the site content, and keyword relevance. Keep in mind that there are lots of differences between MSN and Yahoo and Google. All search engine algorithms are similar, but little differences can have big effects when it comes to SEO. The nice thing about MSN is that its algorithm isn’t as strict as those of Yahoo! and Google and is therefore a very powerful SEO tool in and of itself.

Relevant themes and topics are very important to MSN optimization, and you should also consider keyword density – remember, no keyword stuffing, as MSN explicitly says this is against their rules. The general rule is that you should make sure that there are key words in your title and then follow the basic platform for key words. Put a few in a header at the top of your page; scatter a few throughout the page including several in the first and last paragraphs; finally, put a couple of links that contain key words towards the bottom of your page. These steps are common for all search engine optimizations and should be a set process for every page that you attempt to optimize. Complete this work before attempting any other SEO procedures as this is the basis of SEO.

You may not consider everything you just read to be crucial information about SEO. But don't be surprised if you find yourself recalling and using this very information in the next few days.

Links are important, and maintaining good incoming links with your keywords will get you good rankings. It’s very important to get as many natural links as possible – providing interesting and useful content can make this happen for you with no extra work at all! You’ll seem completely natural to MSN’s spider. These natural links are the basis of link SEO. If you are trying to attain links you should first attempt to attain these links from pages that would naturally link to you but may not have heard of your site yet. After you have done this you should go to directories and other sources of links that may not be as obvious. First things first, don’t mess up your search engine listings because of a bunch of bogus links from unsuitable, questionable, or malicious locations. These links can and will get you banned.

MSN doesn’t allow you to pay to boost your site’s ranking, but they do offer advertising. This advertising will allow you to pay a certain amount for links in their “sponsored links” boxes on the top and sides of each results page. The value of these links depends on the demand for them. At any particular time a sponsored link could become very expensive by somebody bidding an outrageous amount for a link, or by a large number of people trying to overwhelm a niche market.

MSN doesn’t update often, but when it does it often removes links it believes to be out of date, so make sure you change your site occasionally.

One thing that MSN likes a lot is well-formed HTML code, with closed, valid tags. Watch out for broken links, and make sure you have static URLs that don’t move around, and contain your keywords. 

Knowing enough about SEO to make solid, informed choices cuts down on the fear factor. If you apply what you've just learned about SEO, you should have nothing to worry about.

James Mahony is the founder of Search Engine Optimization Tips - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization

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