MSN Explanation

Could someone explain SEO for MSN?

[ALbino]

I am constantly confused by MSN. It seems people say "Just build good links and good anchor text and you will be fine" but I don't see that as the case at all. Today I was again browsing through some of my keyword combos on MSN for which I'm #1 on Google and I'm often in the 50's - 100's or more on MSN. I would accept that if I could make heads or tails of the people that are ahead of me, but I can't. There are sites in the top 10 that have 0 backlinks other than internal ones and some of them only have 1 of those. So I don't understand how lots of links and good anchor text gets you to the top since none of these people have that. If someone could give me a checklist of actual things that affect the MSN algo and not fake "tried and true" SEO methods I would really appreciated it. Thanks.

[bakedjake]

pageoneresults gives an idea of a good Ink page here (msg 26):

Inktomi Optimization Frustration [webmasterworld.com]

You should probably read the whole thread.

[Mohamed_E]

In msg #28 of the thread referred to above pageoneresults writes:

These are just a couple of the areas that need to be focused on. I've found that if the pages do well in Google, they typically do well elsewhere.

I have never consciously optimized for Ink, but seem to do as well in Ink Pure Search as in Google.

Clearly that is not ALbino's case, I would be curious to know what it is that makes some sites rank very similarly with these two SEs, while others rank very differently.

[idoc]

The post by pageone pretty much sums Ink up from my experience also. I would add:

Title "fuzzy widget"
H1 tag at TOP of page containing "fuzzy widget"
hyperlink within H1 "fuzzy widget" text at page top to page itself or other internal "fuzzy widget" page
"fuzzy widget" in various context across page 6-8 times depending on number of words on page
links to internal "fuzzy widget" pages

Pages not too bulky about 200 words at most. Think of multiple highly targeted pages and not one big page that gets all the word pairs.

You should do well with this alone with two word pairs or easy to moderate one word terms. Maybe for the hard money one word keywords then the off page or total site theming factors come in... or maybe there is a "white list" of trusted authoritative sites of sorts...I wish I knew that one ;)

[willybfriendly]

Whereas with Google my index page does very well, on Ink it is usually my optimized inner pages that show up. But, every page on the site is designed to be a doorway. Kind of old fashioned I guess, but it works.

WBF