MSN Search News

1. MSN search ads will compete with Google and Yahoo!

1. MSN tests shopping search engine
   

Microsoft is quietly testing their new MSN Shopping Search Engine. Microsoft's new product focuses on price comparison and customer user ratings. MSN will be facing stiff competition from this growing market of shopping search engines.

MSN Search Engine Optimization Tips

1. Content is King - MSN Search, as do all search engines, places a heavy emphasis on content. This includes on the page, off the page, and entirely off the site. The MSN algorithm seems to place more of an emphasis on content then google and also appears to allow a higher level of keyword density.
2. Content Benefits - By placing an emphasis on keyword rich content you are improving your site in two ways. You are providing the search engines with direct immediate access to search engine result pages (SERP) and you are providing content that can start to build natural (organic) links. That is, links that users provide to you because you provide something interesting in your content.
   
3. Page Design - Make sure each page on your website has a unique Title. It is also a good idea to provide a title tag in your meta tags to be consistent. This helps create a uniformed and theme appearance. MSN (and Yahoo) still seem to use meta description and keywords. So take care on properly defining these meta tags.
   
4. Static vs Dynamic URLs - MSN Beta didn't work well with Dynamic URLgooggoos, but that is no longer the case. You can't go wrong with Static URLs but with the new MSN Search engine dynamic URLs for the most part work well.
5. On Page Keyword Density - MSN is usually more tolerant of higher keyword densities. I would warn you that you should never do keyword stuffing, which will dramtically lower your rankings. Keyword stuffing is defined as, "Repeating of keywords and keyword phrases in meta tags and elsewhere on a HTML page."
6. Page Theme - Make sure all your on page content is relevant and that your consistent in your terms.
7. Page Links - Make sure all your web pages have outgoing links to other parts of your website. Failure to do so may cause MSN Search to completely drop the page from its index.
8. Clean Coding - MSN Search apparently will penalize you for poorly written code. So make sure you run your pages through a validation program. You can try WDG HTML Validator or my personal favorite, The W3C Markup Validation Service. MSN's own guidelines says that proper coding is a factor for their algorithm.
9. Off Page Content - This is important for all search engines and deserves being repeated. You want to have as many links to your site from relevant sites as possible. Never use Link Farms! A good trick you should use is look at all the smaller directories (like us! - shameless plug) in the subject area of your site. Visit sites similar to yours and if you like the site send a polite email to the site contact(s). Make sure you put all sites you contact into a document with the date, time, and email address of those you contacted. A column for if they contact you back is good, as is a column with the URL of where they added you site.
   

MPS Staff