Optimizing for MSN

I started this blog post quoting another SEO who was picked up by a Topix newsfeed, discussing what MSN desires in order to rank your site highly in the search engines. I became skeptical of what I was reading…specifically that MSN “will not index text in headers, footers or tables”. What? I had to delete what I was writing and go straight to the horses mouth.

I scanned the section entitled “site owner help” but did not see any reference to text not being indexed from headers, footers and tables. If that were the case, 99% of all websites would not be indexed because most sites are still done in tables! And how does MSN know if I create my pages using a header and footer include? They are rendered at the server level before MSNbot views my site.

If you find this info in the site owner help please do reply here and let me know! I will amend my blog ;-)

Long story short, the following things are relevant on a page to help with rankings in any search engine:

• page title
• meta description
• meta keywords
• keyword rich content close to the top of the page
• reasonable page weight (too many graphics will make your page too heavy)
• keep text out of images if you want the text indexed
• internal linking - try to keep pages within 3 links of each other

That is a really short list - there are many, many more factors, but start with this and it will help ;-)