Internet Marketing for MSN - An SEO Q&A

If you’ve been following MSN lately, you know that the MSN team is busy tweaking things lately. To this SEO, it seems as if links are starting to play a greater role in their algorithm, whereas on-page factors have to-date ruled.

Reading a recent interview at SEOmoz, it does seem to be this way:

Rand: What would you consider to be the most important factor in determining the relevance of a website besides who links to that website?

MSN: The most important factor is ultimately users. Do your users rave about your content? Do they point to your content as a definitive source? MSN is working to ensure that the most relevant content for a particular query is returned to users. If you build what users think is highly relevant then MSN Search will work to reflect that.

Rand: This question comes from a University professor who has been involved in webdev for several years. He asks:

I would like to hear how they describe what it takes to make a successful site. Not a site that is out to game the engines but given that I have a site with superb content that I want to share with others what advice do they have for me as a webmaster so that my site can get the level of attention that it deserves. I’d like to hear straight from the source what they efforts they think that a webmaster should employ. Where should a webmaster spend limited resources? The role of SEO, the role of advertising on other sites, the role of content creation.

MSN: If you already have great content (maybe everybody thinks they have great content :)) then your focus should really be on getting people who are relevant to your field to link your pages. For example, if you are the world expert in quilting then find sites that talk about quilting and see if they will link to your site, where it makes sense.

Rand: How does a brand new website get respect (rankings)? Even with fantastic content, it’s hard to stand out without many, many links. What should I do to get exposure for my long efforts and investments?

MSN: The focus should be on high quality, organic link building as described above.

Emphasis mine. There’s also a few other nuggets:

Rand: Does the MSN Search Engine measure, index and/or weight the meta keywords tag, Hx tags, alt tags in images or the “title” attribute in links?

MSN: Yes, we do use all of these tags with the exception of the meta keywords tag. We do not index data from the meta keywords tag because it is not visible to the user in a standard browser. Additionally, it has a long history of being spammed.

Rand: Can MSN read and crawl Javascript, CSS and/or Flash files & links?

MSN: We are currently not indexing flash; however, this feature is on our radar based on customer feedback.

Rand: In the MSN guidelines it says that static pages are best, but MSN has been indexing url’s including sessionid’s successfully, so is this still important to being indexed?

MSN: We emphasize the use of static URL’s wherever possible primarily to help ensure that the pages that site owners create get linked to. If you create a dynamic page the chances that someone will link to it are probably a bit lower than if you simple static URL.

Rand: How does MSN handle blatantly spamming sites/pages – is there manual removal when spam is reported?

MSN: There are two approaches that we take. First, we explicitly disallow certain techniques that are often used by spammers – stuffing pages with a lot of keywords, doorway pages. If we identify pages using these techniques we will remove them the index. Second, we have an algorithmic spam detection tool that looks for pages that appear to be of low value or be the likely result of being spammed.

Rand: Is it possible to hurt a site’s rankings by pointing too many links to it too quickly or by pointing too many low quality links at it? Is there concern that these techniques could be used maliciously against a legitimate site?

MSN: A good analogy here is you want to play in good neighborhoods. If you have a lot of spam sites point to your page then, well, your page starts to look like spam. On the other hand, if you are endorsed by many high quality sites then there is a good chance that your site is also high quality.

Head over to SEOmoz to read the entire thing.