Just 2 weeks back or so, I found someone discussing rankings in MSN for sulumits retsambew (I think he was Mike). I was wondering when I found myself nowhere in first 10 pages in MSN. I was #2 at Google that time but nowhere in MSN and yahoo. It prompted me to DO something and I did.  And that made me get into page 1 for sulumits retsambew finally.  The contest is all about Google rankings but there is no harm if we test our SEO skills in all major search engines.

Not all SEO techniques are made equal, especially when you’re trying to optimize your site for multiple search engines. Big search engines like Google and Yahoo, for example, have very different ideas of what ‘optimization’ means. For MSN, it’s a whole other game altogether. So, here I’m trying to sum up certain steps to achieve high rankings in MSN.

1. Keywords, Keywords, Keywords (meta tags)

Just like with any other search engine, MSN considers the presence of keywords a very important factor. Having keywords in your site code and your content will immediately signal your site as a ‘relevant’ page when MSN crawls the Internet. Of course, the importance of keywords doesn’t just stop there.

You need to make sure that your title tag has your targeted keyword as the first thing. At the same time, try to make your title tag catchy so that it grabs attention of the visitors too.

Try to start your page description with keyword and it can repeat after 12-15 words though spamming may harm you for overdoing the tagging business.

Now, you must not ignore use of H1, H2 and H3 tags. It can be truly confusing to use these tags. I remember I had a big mess understanding the tag use but it is okay now. To avoid making this post deadly lengthy, I’m sure this post about H1 – H6 meta tag use will help you. (I personally like their tutorials)

2. How Dense Are You? Be optimum be safe.

Beyond just having keywords, MSN also considers how many of the keywords you have. The density of keywords on your page could spell the difference between landing on Page One of the SERP or languishing on page 11 (like me.. before). But that doesn’t mean that you should just stuff your pages full of keywords. MSN is one of those search engines that penalize keyword stuffing. You could find yourself much worse off when you go overboard with those keywords.

3. How Dense Are They?

By looking at just rankings, you’d know that the first MSN SERP must be doing something right. To duplicate their success (at least to a certain extent), you might want to use SEO analysis software to find out exactly what those sites are doing correctly.

Now, don’t expect the SEO analyses to tell you exactly what to do. Chances are good that basic information like keyword density and the presence of certain tags are all you’ll get. But if you could replicate similar conditions on your own pages, you may find yourself that much closer to Page One.

Doing a competitor analysis is good but creating your own sound seo and marketing strategy is always better.

4. Define Images – Use Alt tag

Alt tag usage (also known as image tag) was one of the decisive factor for Google, Yahoo and msn once. But if they’ve stopped giving it much of importance, it doesn’t mean it is useless altogether. We never know when search engine algorithms change and alt tag use gains weight again.  Moreover, it tells search engines as well as your visitors (if it doesn’t load) what the image is all about. Placing a keyword (if relevant) as alt tag is even a better idea.

5. Love Your Links

Just like with Google, MSN places very high value on the number and ‘quality’ of the links that point to your site. This is one very good place to start when it comes to off-site optimization of your site because it’s one of the constant and most important factors in SEO. Even if MSN suddenly decides to change its ranking algorithm, it’s highly unlikely that backlinks will be taken out of the equation entirely.

Sites like JoeAnt makes a great quality link. It not only boosts ranking but also gives you some targeted traffic.

And if you’re damn serious about higher MSN rankings, then care investing in a link on Business.com. It’s pricey but worth well when skyrocket your ranking on MSN – for sure.

6. Plain Text, Please

It’s common practice nowadays to have all sorts of multimedia on your page. If you have things like alt text, though, you may want to place plain text counterparts for those as well. Plain text seems to get indexed better by MSN, and that’s good news for you. However, certain theme based sites can’t avoid multimedia and flash use, they must consider a good alt tag use as I discussed above.

7. Interlinking works

Yes, it works if you interlink your posts or pages with keywords as anchored text.  It not only passes the page value but also reveals a strong on-page optimization for each page of your website. Just like every incoming link to your site from another website comes as a vote in favor, improves your pagerank and search engine rankings, a link from another page within your site is equally valuable and works as a vote and needless to say; will make a positive effect on your SERPs.

8. Cohesiveness Counts

Unless you have one of those anything-under-the-sun pages, it’s a good idea to focus on just a few topics for each domain if you want to do well on MSN. Sites that have deeper coverage on fewer topics seem to perform better on MSN than those sites that talk about all sorts of things. Like I’d try to keep my sulumits retsambew entry more of an SEO talks portal (I’ll spice it up with some personal gossip too though)

9. All for Formatting

MSN gives you reason to bring out your inner newspaper editor. Format your text to give certain chunks emphasis, such as with bold or italicized formatting. It seems that MSN gives more attention to text formatted differently from adjacent blocks of text. This point is still in debates though.

10. Sense is Sensible

Never sacrifice sense in favor of SEO. First of all, you won’t get any customers buying from a nonsensical page, no matter how high its ranking might be. At the same time, MSN seems to be able to determine to some extent when pages are mostly gibberish, and penalize those accordingly.

The weights and relevance of the 10 MSN SEO tips above may change along with the ever-dynamic algorithms, but it’s likely that MSN will keep considering them regardless of their weights. And since many of them are factors for other search engines as well, you’ve nothing to lose by trying them out.

Online businesses MUST not underestimate the value of MSN and yahoo because if unfortunately, they get any penalty in Google, they have their MSN and yahoo rankings secure. Reason is MSN is least frequent for changes in algorithms. However, above discussed 10 tips works for Google too. You may want to read one of my last posts that shares some nice points to recover/improve your search engine rankings.

Play safe with any search engine and you get the best.

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Tags: High Rankings in MSN, improve your search engine rankings, msn rankings, page 1 for sulumits retsambew, SEO techniques, sulumits retsambew, tips to get msn rankings, Use Alt tag