MSN Optimization at a Glance

By Mostafa Soleimanzadeh

If you want to be successful at the web, you shouldn't ignore optimization for MSN search engine.

MSN is the third search engine now and has emphasis on using on page optimization techniques, instead Google and Yahoo pay close attention to your incoming link anchor text, so MSN indexes more pages than other search engines, and in result you can rank your pages higher and faster in MSN search engine.

Microsoft has published guidelines for site owners. It is important for MSN that you use well-formed HTML code and don't have broken links in your pages.

They suggest to:

Use a robots.txt file to control how MSNBot indexes your site, using a robots.txt file is important for other crawlers, too.

Place descriptive content near the top of each web page and make sure each web page has a clear topic and purpose.

Add a website description into a Description meta tag. If you change your content, update your website description.

Contents are king for MSN, limit all pages to a reasonable size, whit out picture fewer than 150 KB. Add a site map; this enables MSNBot to find all of your pages easily. Choose one topic for each page.

Avoid loading pages with irrelevant words to increase a page's keyword density and don't use hidden text or links, this means you spam the MSN and they may remove you from their index.

Don't forget that MSN is a very content and keyword sensitive search engine. If you pay close attention to your keywords and content, MSN Search will reward your website with strong search engine rankings.

You can learn more about the MSN Search beta product by reading their blog located here: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch and their site owner suggestion guidelines are located at http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx.

On page optimization is important for other search engines too, with optimization your page for MSN your ranking will improve in other search engines.

For more information about other search engines refer to my WebSite.

Mostafa Soleimanzadeh is the owner of http://www.netmarketingway.com/ where you'll find articles and Free content about Search Engine Optimization strategies and Website Promotion ways. Learn How to Optimize Your Website for Higher Search Engine Rankings.

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SEO General Guidelines

By Andreas Obermueller

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

SEO is an exciting and ongoing process that involves not only an initial optimized website, but also permanent maintenance and evaluating search results on a regular basis. With the ever-changing Internet technology, SEO experts sometimes have contrasting opinions on what makes a good website. However, there are some general guidelines most of them agree on.

Design & Content

You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a trong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.

Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.

Don't put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).

You should include a site map to help users navigate easily through your website.

Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.

You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.

While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.

Technical Issues

Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can't see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.

Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.

While it is advised session IDs to track visitors' path through the website, you shouldn't do this for search bots.

The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it's updated and it doesn't somehow block search engine crawlers.

Website Promotion

After you've built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites link to it.

Submit your website to major search engines (Google, Yahoo/Altavista, MSN) to get it indexed, along with a site map that will tell them the site structure.

Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.

Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.

Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time. However, following these basic SEO guidelines will improve your chances of increasing your website traffic and is a better practice than looking for a way to cheat on search engines in order to get your pages indexed.

Copyright 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:

Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andreas_Obermueller