SEO for
MSN
Proper SEO for MSN
requires that a site be structured well with a
distinct theme throughout and many inbound links.
The advantage an SEO has
while optimizing a
site for MSN is that MSN tends to pick up and
credït new content and inbound links very
quickly. That means that with the right tactics
in place, one can rank a website relatively
quickly on this important engine.
While MSN has the
lowest number of searches performed on it,
ComScore's report back in July revealed that MSN
searchers were also 48% more likely to purchase a
product or service online than the average
Internet user. A very important statistic for
website owners that sell online.
To rank highly on MSN one needs to build a solid
sized site (exactly how large will depend on your
industry – look at the size of your
competitors' sites for an idea), a relevant theme
throughout the site that focuses on your primary
keywords and a good number of links. MSN doesn't
(at this time) employ an aging delay on links
such as the one employed by both Google and
Yahoo! so the effects of the site and inbound
links can be picked up very quickly and with good
SEO efforts one can rank well within a few months
on MSN for competitive phrases.
SEO for Yahoo!
Until recently
Yahoo! acted very much like MSN, but nöw it's
leaning a bit more towards Google. Ranking a
website well on Yahoo! requires a solid-sized
site with unique content and a very good number
of links.
While PageRank is
a Google factor, Yahoo! does have some type of
page value factor at play. Many moons ago Yahoo!
was playing with a PageRank-like calculation
called WebRank. They even went so far as to put
out a beta toolbar testing it. This indicates
that there is a factor at play in the Yahoo!
algorithm similar to Google's PageRank –
they just don't advertise what a specific page's
value is.
Yahoo! is placing
a fair amount of emphasis on the age of links
though not in the same way that Google is. We
will get to Google shortly, however to understand
what to expect from Yahoo! one must understand
that when you get a link to your website it won't
deliver its full value for a number of months.
While the exact number of months in unknown, it
appears to be around 8 before it delivers its
full weïght, though it will hold some weïght
from day one and this weïght will increase as
time passes.
To rank well on Yahoo!, you must optimize your
site similar to what you would do for MSN and you
must build a large number of inbound links and
have patience as these links age. You will not
see a sudden spike 2 weeks after a large
link-building campaign. You will likely have to
wait 3-4 months to notice any significant effect.
SEO For Google
Virtually every
webmaster and website owner is primarily
concerned about attaining Google rankings because
of the significantly higher number of searchers
using it. Provided that you are building your
website following the best practices of SEO (i.e.
unique content, a sizable amount of content, and
a good number of incoming links), then your
rankings are sure to follow. However, because of
the aging delay it will likely take longer than
for MSN or Yahoo! Google considers the age of
your links, your domain and even the individual
page to be factors, and the longer your page has
been online the better.
Essentially, ranking a site on Google requires
that you take the same actions as for the other
two, continue your link building efforts on an
ongoing basis to ensure that you end up with
more-and-more links, and that you update your
content and add content on a fairly regular basis
(through the addition of a blog for example).
Tying It
Together
The logical
process for a new website or one at the first
stages of SEO is to first target MSN. At this
point, you can focus your attention on continuing
to build high-quality, relevant links to, and
content on, your site which will continue to
increase your value on Yahoo! and Google.
Analysis will be
required to determine exactly what weïght you
will be giving to different areas. For example,
if your onsite factors are optimized for MSN,
then you know that you will need to make up for
this in the offsite factors for Yahoo! and
Google. If you figured you would need 100 links
to rank on Google, then you will nöw need to up
that number to account for the fact that you have
optimized your site for a different engine.
During the
analysis process you will likely want to use a
tool to speed up the process of keyword density
analysis and competitor link analysis. At
Beanstalk we use a tool called Total Optimizer Pro though there are others
out there (note: I have yet to find one that does
what this one does as quickly and easily).
Conclusion
I am hoping that
none of you read the title and were expecting to
rank on the first page of all three major engines
next week. Ranking highly on all three major
engines takes time, patience and a good few
rounds of tweaking to get the perfect balance of
onsite and offsite optimization. Of course, as
you can gather, done properly it's well worth the
effort.
About The Author
Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine
Positioning, Inc.. Dave writes with years of
expreience in SEO and optimization tactics. Watch
Beanstalk's SEO news blog for details on the
publication of a 4-part series on ranking your
website highly accross the "big three
engines" in January of 2006. Dave would like
to thank TopNet Solutions for the development of Total Optimizer Pro - a comprehensive SEO tool
that provides a blueprint of how the top 10 got
there, so you can too.
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