Pro-SEO

For some time it has been accepted that the MSN search engine is the easiest of the big three (Yahoo, Google, MSN) to rank well in early. But why is it so easy to rank well in MSN? And how do we do it?

Why is it so easy to rank well on MSN?

Ranking well on MSN seems to rely heavily on on-page SEO. This means MSN give great importance to what is on the page as opposed to search engines, like Google, Who give great importance to off page SEO such as backlinks. MSN also don't appear to have a sandbox or ageing delay like Google does, Or if they do have one it's certainly not as devastating or as long as the Google sandbox which can last upto a year. This means if new sites do it right they can jump right to the top of the SERPS on MSN.

How to rank well In MSN?

In this section i am going to list a few things that will help you rank well on MSN, You should be aware that following all of these tips may mean you rank lower in Google and Yahoo, Or disappear altogether, So use your own judgment before committing to ranking well only in MSN. It doesn't make sense to optimize your pages for just MSN.

1. To rank well on MSN make the title of your page the exact term you expect people too search for. MSN pays close attention to the title of the page and if your title is exactly what the searcher searched for you will more than likely turn up on the first page at least.
2. Use H tags. Your H1 tag should be a variation of your title. Try to keep it as close to the title as possible, But not identical. Perhaps use the same words in a different order.
3. MSN seems to be, in my experience, the search engine that pays closest attention to meta tags. So get them keywords and descriptions right. Again, Make them what you think people will be searching for.
4. In the body of your page use bold and underline on 50% of your keywords. Adding emphasis to all of your keywords will look like spam, So only do it to half, And do it mostly to words at the top of the page.
5. Use keywords in URLs, MSN likes keywords in URLs. While not as much importance is placed on keywords in URLs by MSN as they used to, It's still an effective tactic used to rank well in MSN.
6. MSN don't seem to pay attention too how quickly you get backlinks. So where google would penalize you for getting 1000 backlinks in a week, MSN will not.
   

MSN have a much simpler algo compared to google, So with a little experimentation it won't be long before you have a pretty good idea what MSN look for and what you have to do, or not do, to rank well in MSN.
If you think of it as Googles stupider younger brother you wont go far wrong.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 7/20/2006. You can skip to the end and leave a response.