MSN search

Lost rankings in new MSN search

[velodrome]

Hello,

I desperately need to regain positions in MSN search for several keywords. Before the new search was launched - I had several terms on the first page. Now I have only 2 or 3.

Dont really want to reoptimise specifically for MSN as all terms are still doing really well in Google and Yahoo!

Can anyone suggest why this may have happened - and best way to regain rankings?

Thanks in advance.

[S_E_Zero]

MSN relies heavily on anchor links to your pages, so if you don't want/need to change any on site linking structure then try getting some links off site that use the exact phrase that you are looking to rank highly under in MSN.

This will not only make your sites soar to the top on MSN it will also help with Yahoo and the good old Google.

[velodrome]

ok will try that out soon - thankyou

[velodrome]

Actually - the site already has several external links with the keywords in the link - and still its not showing up in MSN :-(

[webhound]

ummm, you might wanna have more than several. :-)

[RichTC]

I dont believe its about anchor text links, content is certainly king on MSN. We have pages with no anchor links to them that feature well but they are deep in content relevent to the search term.

Interesting thread all the same

[webhound]

Rich, is this a competitive term?

[steveb]

If it is "not showing up" that likely has nothing to do with optimisation stuff, but if you just dropped, MSN doesn't care about on page content or page titles. It's about keyword in URL and volume of links. Get more links.

[MLHmptn]

Links alone are simply not enough. I have one of my sites that ranks #2 without a single link to it and the term serves up 6,000,000 results. Content defintely plays a big part in the MSN algorithm as well as keyword density. The description meta tag also plays a big factor. This was stated by MSNdude already so you should not exclude the description meta. Use variations or synonyms of the keywords you intend to target. Works extremely well for me at the moment.

Just don't ask me about google optimization! The first thing I would recommend is a robots.txt disallow for googlebot!

Bring the heat MSN! Google deserves it!

[steveb]

"I have one of my sites that ranks #2 without a single link to it"

Even MSN isn't that awful. You have an orphan page ranking? How long has it been an orphan?

[RichTC]

Problem here i guess is that google has brainwashed webmasters that linking = High position. I guess it works on Google moreso than it does on MSN hence why some sites that do well in Google may not do so well in MSN.

If you want your site to do well in MSN you need to look beyond just links imo and have plenty of relevent content

Frankly i find MSNs current Algo superb. All the sites indexed in my category that are high up are rich in content and highly relevent to the search term whilst in google i still get back loads of non relevent and directory listing sites etc.

MSN is certainly looking at content as a MAJOR factor and thats a vast improvement on the google way of having cr@p web sites feature just because they have loads of anchor links are of a certain age and bugg@r all content.

And yes, the pages i refer to that dont have links are in a competitive area.

What i would say is that i have recently noticed on Google that some high pages in the SERPS that have little content but have links to high ranking sites (on topic)rank well even above more relevent websites. Meanwhile i have taken outbound links off pages and improved position in MSN. Im guessing but it looks like google likes some outbound links to High PR sites but MSNs not so keen and would rather see your own rich content on the site without the need to point to it elsewhere

As i say its all about content if you ask me. Build a quality site, with quality pages, that can stand on its own and it should feature well

[velodrome]

This is all very interesting - BUT - even when I search for the main keywords in the URL (which is the name of the website) this does not show up. Surely this should be a good enough reason to appear?

[RichTC]

velodrome

Has the bot made a visit to your site?

sticky me and i can have a look at site if that helps

[steveb]

<misread>

[prema]

hi everyone,

We are travel agaency and are facing the same problem, completely out of sight in msn listing, since the new update. Our site is doing very well with the required keywords in google and yahoo.
If you say content is king in msn, our website has lot of information for the users.
Any other suggestions other than content please...