What could be a learning curve on MSN in terms of SEO? I have also ask this especially on where will I start on doing SEO on MSN. It is difficult to find out as a newbie in the field of search engine optimization. So taking into the area on SEO, the good thing you want to check even for other search engine is to search for a particular key phrase or keyword and check the sites on the first pages on their search result.

That is the first thing to do, because no one knows, unless you are of MSN search team, the algorithm behind their search engine. The rankings seems very difficult to determine. Oh, by the way, maybe you will be also interested on some search engine operators like site: link:(which unfortunately MSN disabled this feature), I will try to post some search engine operators on my next post.

Okay we go back to the topic, observe the contents, title, description and excerpt of the sites listed on the first page. You will compare this elements versus your chosen key phrase or keyword you used during the search.  What you are observing is the on page optimization of the site.

How many key phrase or keyword thus the top sites have based on your search term? If you notice that is the keyword density. If you will ask me, how many keyword should I put in or on what percentage the density of keyword in order for your site to appear high on MSN search. I also don’t know, observe how the sites on the top 10 results created or managed their respective density. Just for reference you can take down up to 5% of your keyword on your site. There are many tools in the internet that can analyze your site density versus the top 10 keyword density. In this way, you can compare on how will you implement it perfectly on your site.

On title of your site plays a great role not only on search engine but for visitors. It tells what your site is all about. Contents should be relevant on the title of your site. Your site title or page title is the one showing in the internet world of searches. This is the reason why almost all visitors go or click your site. An accompanying relevant description to the title creates a blended and well relevant search engine rankings. The percentage where visitors click on your site check the description of your site based on what search engine look at your site. Having your keyword or key phrase in description is way being loved by MSN search, they still rely on meta tags like description and keyword meta’s.

Again, check the rankings you previously saw on the top 10 the description of the sites shown on the  results. Check how MSN get the description and the excerpt coming from the content. Check how many keywords appear and how they are placed.

Do not in any way do over stuffing of keyword on content and description, these will definitely hurt your site. Relevancy of internal sites or how your internal links linking to each other is another thing that MSN is looking into its system, though I am not saying, indeed it is, this is only based on test and observation.  Heading tags (h1) should not be over used just for keyword stuffing, it doesn’t help on ranking you high but rather help on pushing you down on your ranking due to keyword stuffing.

Title is match to description is match to tags is match to keyword is match to content and is match to internal links, you will surely achieve your desired rankings. One lesson is that build your site for visitors not for search engines.

Next post will tackle about off page optimization for MSN. That will be part 2.