MSN Advice

decent ranking in msn without L$

[jamsy]

Feeling pretty vulnerable at present with to much emphasis concentrated on Google. In fact Google and or its results via AOL, Yahoo etc provide 99% of Search Engine for one of my sites and this isnt healthy when on a commission basis and especially at this time of the month when i cant sleep waiting for the update.

So i am told, MSN is the only rival to Google and i need to sort some decent listings out in MSN - it may be feeble i know but this site is pretty new (about 2 months old) and only has two pages in INK which are nicely optimised and doing well in google but no where to be seen on MSN (after the L$ results obviously), my question is:

How on earth do you optimise for INK/MSN are there guidelines etc

thanks again
Jamsy

I appreciate you will say pay ink - which in itself isnt a problem/issue but if i cant get the other two pages listed high then why should i try the other 400 + ;)

[tigger]

The advantage in paying means you get a guarantee crawling of the page so you can tweak away till you get the rankings your after, my experience with Ink is good page titles & descriptions, you could also just pay for a couple while you experent with the code, but I completely agree with your concerns over Google.

MSN is my second highest referrer but I don't know how long that will last

[arc_light]

some alternatives are Zeal UK (if you have noncommercial content) or Overture for certain search terms. aside from those its either LS or INK. can't really help you with specifics on internal optimizing, but those are the key providers that I'm aware of. good luck!

[engine]

To speed things along, you could consider Overture UK for the sponsored site listings while you wait for slurp to come around in due course.

Ink's pretty straightforward - good titles and description will go a long way towards a healthy position.

[Axacta]

Good free position on Ink and LS doesn't necessarily mean good serp on MSN. I rank #6 on Ink and #3 on LS, but only #36 on MSN. Don't ask...

[2_much]

I've also been looking advertisign with MSN and the ROI is incredible.

[jamsy]

I've also been looking advertisign with MSN and the ROI is incredible

In what way incredible - incredibly good or bad ;)

Ink's pretty straightforward - good titles and description will go a long way towards a healthy position

Engine is there a place/source of info to check the optimum length of the description meta tag for INK.

Having said that i suppose its a suck it and see if i am crawled every 48 hours then hey why not at worst i am sure to find the correct algo within a month only 15 tries ;)

[engine]

>Engine is there a place/source of info to check the optimum length of the description meta tag for INK.

hehehe - the best place is to look at the SERPs in Ink's db. ;)

About 250 characters with spaces in the description and 120 with spaces in the title is the maximum (portals may clip this data to suit their page display). Although I usually work with a maximum of 70 characters in the title as a generic limit.

[jamsy]

LOL - cheers Engine pretty lame question by me now I come to think of it.

Its good to see someone else is here in this UK forum and not 100% over on the google update thread. ;)

[engine]

>over on the google update thread
hehehe, been there, done that.

Good luck with MSN - let us know how you get on.

[jarvster]

Hi,
Sorry to jump in but this in an interesting thread.

By optmising your titles and descs to gain good msn/ink results - will you not lose some of the google positions that you have, because of the difference in algo.

Or would you have diff pages for ink and google?

[makemetop]

I always optimise for INK, the pages work fine on Google once DMOZ and Yahoo links kick in. The same pages also work on Teoma, FAST and AV so don't stress yourself too much over the difference in algo. That really only kicks in if you are going for super-competitive phrases.

[engine]

Jarvester, welcome.
There is not so much emphasis on the meta content tag with Google.

I always create the tags as a matter of good practice.

Final point, the paid listings at MSN will appear above the Ink backfill so look at your sector and see how competitive it is. You might find the first Ink backfill sits some way down the SERPs.

[jarvster]

OK thanks.

When you say "paid listings at MSN" does that mean L$ or ink paid?

[jamsy]

paid listings = overture and L$

[4eyes]

Make MeTop sums it up pretty well.

On all except the really competitive phrases a site/page aimed at Inktomi will perform well pretty much across the board.

We use Inktomi as a testing ground - optimise the page, pay yer money, observe the results and tweak as required to get the ranking.

Then push out with a link pop campaign (or at least make sure they are in every directory worth a hoot)

In almost every case the page ranks well on Google once the page rank stuff has kicked in.

If a customer does not have the budget to pay for a Looksmart listing then do some research and target keywords that have few Looksmart listings on MSN - no point in paying for page 3 of the SERP.

Sometimes this means preparing an extra page to target the looksmart-light keyphrase traffic, but as these still rank well across the board, it is time well spent.