MSN Rankings

Going up In google, dropping like a lead weight in MSN

[Buckley]

Hi guys and girls.

I haven't spent much time here on the MSN board but I have a couple of questions you might be able to assist me with. I have a 4 year old site that has steadily been growing. I've built the site slow and steady and my rankings for my most important 2 and 3 keyword phrase have risen from page 4 or 5 18 months ago on Google to page 1 pos 7 and 10 respectively.

When MSN's new SE was released my rankings jumped around a bit but were generally in the top 20 and sometimes well into the top 10. They have declined to where they are now on page 15!

A competitor who's site has been around for a long time and owns position 1 or 2 on nearly every search engine and has a rock solid site is on page 5.

Are we doing something wrong re MSN? What's the best way to rectify this? Both my site and my competitors (his more so than mine) have lots of relevant good content, good links, friendly site built for the average web surfer so im confused as to why we both rank poorly....me much more so than him :)

Thanks in advance for your help with this.

[Fish_Texas]

Read entire tread on "New MSN Algo Having Problems...
Might answer your questions...
MSN has run a new Algo to combat Spam sites.
Lowered Description & Body KW density to rock bottom...
Hope this helps. Fish Texas

[Tomseys]

same exact thing happened to me

personally, I'm not gonna worry about it, it's their loss

[Tomseys]

Actually, I love msn, just a little frustrated. It seems msn occasionally likes to move stuff around and then after a week or so stuff will come back up. I'd be careful making any serious changes based on this algo tweak/change because if you have sites that have good rank in other se's you could hurt their rank there.

[edited by: Tomseys at 3:07 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2006]

[Fish_Texas]

I don't believe they will come back this time...unless KW density changes are made.

[Tomseys]

might be true, just be careful I guess

[RichTC]

Tom,

Fish is on the money - drop your keyword density right down for onpage factors, reduce content levels and outbound links per page and trust me you will rank for eveything in msn - Oh and if your domain name contains the keyword you cant fail to rank!

You wont come back in msn unless you take this action, but frankly i would leave things alone - The msn algo doesnt work, the serps are a mess as a result and it cant be long before they dump it or change it entirely anyway.

Rich

[Tomseys]

that's my thinking .... I still see some sites with insane keyword density ranking very well on keywords so

I did make a very minor adjustment, make me feel better

please love us again msn, we're sorry :)

[Fish_Texas]

please love us again msn, we're sorry :[smilestopper])

Good post...funny.
Fish Texas

[Buckley]

Good posts guys....thanks. Im not gonna mess with my keyword density, links etc with things going so well in google after spending a long time reaching the top ten for my 3 most important 2 to 3 word keyword phrases.

It seems MSN have a major problem with their algo.

My URL does contain my most important keyword and that's not helping my rankings. My business and website name also contains my most important keyword phrase so i have little choice in having rather high KW density + it's working on Google!

Hope MSN decide to sharpen their act up coz ATM their results in my industry which are usually very stable are all over the place.