Microsoft SEO - From Them Themselves - An SEO Blog by James Harrison

Microsoft has always been one of the easiest engines to rank high on. I remember years back, MSN was the only engine I could check back to a week later and see results from keyword META changes and a little bit of keyword stuffing. Microsoft’s Live Search algorithm is a little more sophisticated now, however it still remains the easiest engine to rank on.

This post isn’t about me shedding my opinion on how to rank well on MSN Live. This post is strictly a MSN SEO summary from Microsoft’s very own Live Search Optimization Document.

So, lets dig into it. Here is what Microsoft says you should do to optimize your web site for their search engine.
MSN SEO

1. Good content is #1 for Microsoft. A site should have unique content written in words that the visitor would use and understand. The content should be naturally linkable and provide content that is entertaining and/or useful. Don’t ‘lock’ up content in flash or java script unless you don’t want the content to be read by the spiders. All content and URL’s should be easy to link to. “Make sure you use descriptive text in your HTML title tag, header tags and URL anchor text“

2. Setup a logical URL/website structure that allows the spiders to easily crawl deeply into your site. Avoid URL’s with 3 or more parameters because the bots will not crawl URL’s with 3 or more parameters for fear of falling into an “infinite loop”(Kind of like putting the line over.33). URL rewriting to make URL’s easier to read by users and to better describe the content/index the page is highly recommended. Canonicalize your domain for consistency, bookmarking and link building. “Use HTTP redirects appropriately (301, 302) instead of JavaScript or Meta Refreshes.”

3. Microsoft recommends you “embrace an HTML standard”. validate your code and use it the way the web authors intended. It’s easier for spiders to crawl common standard sites. Avoid surrounding your content with codes because this could make it harder for the spiders to read. If you want to link to pages that you don’t want the spiders to crawl, it’s OK to create javascript links or robots.txt files. MSN doesn’t parse JavaScript (yet?). “Make sure you put the best content on the top, and the code at the bottom.”

4. MSN understands that you can’t wait for someone to find your site. You must submit your content. They say submit your site to the search engines and to appropriate communities. They recommend creating a sitemap for when submitting to the search engines. http://sitemaps.org. Also, create a XML sitemap that references the robots.txt file. Submit your site to all of the engines, directories, local listings and places that allow you to provide information about your website/company. http://webmaster.live.com.

5. No keyword stuffing. No duplicate copies of websites on different hosts. No content cloaking to trick users and/or robots. No hidden text that spiders can read but the user cannot, and don’t even come close! Do not participate in link farms. Do not find yourself in a lot of link farms and only link farms. Don’t create link farms or pages to lure links.“Links that are not relevant will not be counted as part of our ranking.”

As I said in the beginning, this post isn’t for my 2 cents. THIS IS REAL MSN SEO. Microsoft does boil down to that fact that it is a popularity contest. It’s about what you say about yourself and who and what others have to say about you. If you would like to read the Official MSN SEO Best Practices document, you can find it here: advertising.microsoft.com/seo-optimization

*Disclaimer - Have nothing to do with MSN, Microsoft, Live, Hotmail or Xbox.

Microsoft SEO Specialists