Search Engine Optimization - Guidelines - MSN
MSN
MSN has three pages of guidelines:
- Indexing Overview
- About Web Site Ranking
- Guidelines for successful indexing
Some key suggestions include:
- Have links to every page on your site
- Have relevant content in your pages
- Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages
- Ensure that all tags are closed
- Ensure all links function properly
- Use a robots.txt file or meta tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your site
- Keep your URLs simple and static
- Design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in
- In the visible page text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your site
- Limit all pages to a reasonable size
- We recommend one topic per page
- An HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB
- Make sure that each page is accessible by at least one static text link.
- Keep the text that you want indexed outside of images
- Add a site map
- Links embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map
- Keep your site hierarchy fairly flat
- That is, each page should only be one to three clicks away from the home page
MSN also lists discouraged practices, i.e. what not to do:
- Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's
keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely
to view.
- Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are
visible to users.
- Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your
page, such as link farms.