Sep
30
MSN Optimization: Throwing Spaghetti Against the Wall for Fun & Profit
Filed Under MSN Search | Leave a Comment
There have been a lot of questions floating around about what it takes optimize sites for MSN Search since they launched their own technology. There are discussion at forums, with replies given, some clothed in uncertaintly, and next thing you know people are posting other things that seem to contradict what others have said before. They may or may not have been wrong, but that was yesterday, and today and tomorrow may just be a whole lot different.
MSN picks up sites quickly and pages can rank quickly. I’ve got a new site that was indexed immediately when soft launched in June (aka incomplete but respectable enough to go live), and within a week or so was bringing targeted traffic from MSN - we can tell because there was a nice conversion within the day and another healthy sale within a couple more days. And the logfiles and stats showed what people were searching for and how - right on topic for the site. And that’s with only a few pages up and ranking for what we could call “low hanging fruit,” which in my mind are often the tastiest because they’re so tightly focused and helpful for people searching for specifics.
What it looks like to me is that MSN is updating frequently and/or making algo changes very frequently. Recently I had one site somehow move up to the very top on the main keyword phrases; it happened to hit the demographic just right and there were lots of sales. Then a few weeks later, that site dropped practically out of sight except for some three word phrases (still targeted and on topic, but less traffic) and another of my sites skipped on up to the top for the main keyword phrases and is pulling steadily. I’ve seen this happen several times since, back and forth with some sites.
How did it happen? How were they optimized for MSN? They weren’t. Trying to optimize for MSN would be as futile as trying to hit a moving target. Time can be spent in much better ways than to try to reverse engineer or analyze the MSN algo - because by the time it’s figured out, it’s just liable to change again.
IMHPO, rather than spending time on MSN optimization, time is better spent writing. Lots of writing, using descriptive language, including “target market oriented” adjectives, adverbs and synonyms galore. MSN can handle it - in fact, MSN seems to thrive on what I like to call “semantic diversity.”
What I have noticed, which I think is the KEY to MSN optimization, is that they have shown an almost uncanny ability to pick out individual words used on pages and put the words together to match phrases that searchers use. I know, I know - that’s what search engines are supposed to do! But MSN does it so well that it’s at times almost mind-boggling.
I’ve come to think of the “non-optimization” for MSN as “throwing spaghetti against the wall for fun and profit.” Throw enough of it, and some of it is bound to stick. So writing aimed for visitors who will be reading it, turning the creativity loose and letting the thoughts and communication flow free, and then just throwing the words out there on web pages does make it kind of fun. Then it’s waiting to see what MSN will discover on the pages next update, seeing what they decide they’re about and what the pages will rank for.
So far they’ve been a fun engine, and full of surprises every few weeks.