Each time you key in keywords or terms in search fields, whether it is in Google, Yahoo or MSN, you will be presented with the so-called pages of results. These pages have undergone a process called “SEO” and have earned their respective page rankings.

What is SEO, you ask? SEO or search engine optimization refers to the process of increasing the number of visitor that a website gets by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. Ranking high in the results of a search increases a website’s chance of being visited by a user.

How so? Well, it is common knowledge that most Internet users tend to simply visit the first website in the results instead of browsing through pages and pages of search results. Therefore, it is same to conclude that where a site ranks in a search is crucial in garnering more traffic for the site.

Most people assume that SEO is a very complicated process that is simply too much to comprehend. Meanwhile, others believed that ranking high at the search engine is simply a matter of luck. Both statements are fallacies.

Ranking high at search engines has nothing to do with luck nor is it impossible to understand. All you need is a couple of simple things in order for your web pages to do well at the search engines.

Search engine rankings play a significant role in Internet marketing campaign, which is why it is important that you understand the basics in SEO. Good search engine ranking is not an overnight phenomenon, therefore you must be patient.

There are a lot of search engines out there; some even offers specialized categories that utilize multiple search engine results to compile an outline of listed results, rather than taking results from its own databases.

However, if your main goal is to be successful on the net, then optimization for MSN search engine is a must. MSN is definitely one of the leading search engines on the net today. What separates it from other search engine giants? Well, MSN place great importance in using page optimization techniques, whereas Google and Yahoo concentrates on incoming link anchor text alone. What this means for you is that MSN indexes more pages than other search engines, consequently allowing your pages to rank higher and faster.

Moreover, the search engine giant has recently undergone a major change. What kind of change, you ask? MSN Search has incorporated “neural networks” into its search engine algorithm, or what is now referred to as “RankNet.” This monumental change took place last June. This algorithm is indeed a breakthrough, and is fast becoming a matter of great consideration among search optimizers.

Just what is RankNet and how does it work? Basically, RankNet is a “learning machine” which considers the patterns of human searches and then learns from them thus, providing a more relevant result not only on the current searches but for future searches as well.

Since SEO is not a matter of chance but of strategy, there are certain steps that you could undertake in order for your pages or site to have good rankings at MSN. MSN Search highly advised that you remember two important things. One is to use well-formed HTML code and the other is not to have any broken links in your pages.

There are other steps that you might also consider. For starters, it might be a good idea to use a robots.txt file to control how MSNBot indexes your site. This is also vital for other crawlers.

Keep in mind that MSN is all about content. So, what do you do? Limit all pages to a reasonable size and drop pictures that are lower than 150 KB. Adding a site map would also be beneficial since, it will allow MSNBot to locate all of your pages without difficulty. Remember also to pick one topic for each page.

Avoid putting words that are not relevant just to increase a page's keyword density. Hidden text or links are also a bad idea, this usually indicates spam, and thus, MSN may remove you from their index.

Another thing you can do is place a descriptive content at the top of each web page. Make sure that each page has a clear topic and purpose. You can also add a website description at the Description meta tag. Now, if you ever you change your content, make sure that you update your website description.

One of the most important factors in page optimization, particularly RankNet is the keywords. Placing keywords in a strong paragraph at the beginning, in link text, and repeating it near the end of a page might not be new ideas. As a matter of fact, this has been part of good optimization practice for quite a while now. Moreover, it also makes logical sense when it comes to providing solid information for website users. It is the importance on these elements in the new MSN search engine that is interesting.

Remember that MSN is quite a very content and keyword sensitive search engine. If you give extra care with the use and placing of your keywords as well as great consideration on your content, then you can be assure that all your efforts will not go to waste because MSN Search will reward your site with good search engine rankings.

MSN offers various features and services; MSN Search is just one of them. Optimization for this search engine can very well mean success on the web, what’s more is that it can be accomplished quite easily (provided that your site features a lot of original content). Page optimization is important not only at MSN Search but for other search engines as well. Good optimization of your page will certainly improve your ranking not only at MSN but in other search engines as well.

So what are you waiting for? Why not try it out and see for yourself if you can pull your pages up and do well not only in the MSN search engine but in others as well.

About the Author: Danny Wirken, http://www.theinternetone.net

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BLOGS... they seem to be the talk of the Internet marketing world these days, and for good reason.

Not only do the Search Engines love them for there Content Rich pages, you also have the ability to plug your Blogs "Site Feed" into an RSS feed and then have it syndicated to thousands of websites and directories giving your content more exposure to your target audience.

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is a very Powerful technology that has been around for quite some time and when used correctly, can build an audience overnight.

If you want a crash course on what RSS is, in more depth, since the nature of this article is to show you how to get your Blogs "Site Feed" listed in Yahoo! and MSN, I've provided a link to a page full of articles on RSS related issues. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm

Now, depending on where your Blog is hosted, whether its through a free service like Blogger.com -- http://www.blogger.com or hosted on your websites server you should have a "Site Feed URL" that has the .XML extension.

This is your "Site Feed URL".

You'll usually locate it within your Settings area of Blog control center.

Here's what mine looks like as an example: http://theiwe.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This URL is intended for a RSS News Reader, so disregard its appearance.

Once you find your "Site Feed URL", copy and paste it into Notepad because you'll need it for the next steps coming ahead.

Now, what you need to do is go and set-up an My Yahoo! and My MSN account.

I've provided the links for you below.

- My Yahoo! ==> http://my.yahoo.com

- My MSN ==> http://msn.com

It should only take you about 15-20 minutes at the most.

If you already have accounts with My Yahoo! and My MSN, read on.

This is assuming you already have your accounts set-up, so your next step is to Login to your My Yahoo! account.

When you login, you'll be taken to your Yahoo! page immediately.

What you want to do next is go look under the Yahoo! search box to the left and click on the "Add Content" link.

This will bring you to a new page.

From there, over to the right by the "Find" button you'll see an "Add RSS by URL" link, click on it.

A new window will open with a "Web Form". Simply copy and paste your "Site Feed URL" from Notepad into the web form and click on the "Add" button.

Now, you should see your Blogs name infront of you. Simply click on the yellow "Add To My Yahoo!" button and your feed will be added.

The next thing you should see is your "Site Feed" with your "Headlines".

Click on one of them, it should take you to your Blog, to the desired Headline you chose.

Your My Yahoo! page should Now have your Blogs "Site Feed" Headlines listed at the bottom.

Scroll down to check. If you don't see them, it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for them to appear, so just check back later.

Now that thats done, everytime you update your Blog with NEW content, it'll "Automatically" update on your My Yahoo! page and everybody else's pages who have subscribe to your feed, plus, within 24-48 hours your feed will get Spidered and Indexed by Yahoo!.

Talk about getting the word out in a HURRY with very little effort on your part.

This is "Viral Marketing" at its Best in my mind.

And... it's so simple to implement.

Okay.

Now it's time to do the same to your My MSN account as what you did above to your My Yahoo! page.

Here's the link to go login(click on Sign In from main page): http://www.msn.com

Once your login to your My MSN account you should see an "Add Content" link under the MSN logo to your left. Click on it.

A pop-up should now be displaying. Simply copy and paste your "Site Feed URL" from your Notepad into the web form provided and click the Search button(the green button with the arrow).

You should now be looking at Check Box with your Blogs name beside it. Check off your "Site Feed URL" and then press the OK button at the bottom.

PRESTO! Like magic... your Blogs site feed has now been added to your My MSN page which will then be spidered in the next 24-48 hours and Indexed by MSN.

That's the Power of BLOGS(Web-Logs) and RSS(Real Simple Syndication)combined with two Internet giants.

The only thing you have to bring to the table IS, fresh, quality content that your audience WANTS, and do it on a regular basis.

I post my articles that I write on a weekly basis, making my Blog called... The Internet Wonders Blog - http://theiwe.blogspot.com - a search engine Magnet!

You can do the same because I just showed you HOW.

In conclusion, creating BLOGS and using RSS as a vehicle to syndicate your Blogs content is a Sure-Fire way to get your content spidered more frequently by search engines and the exposure it deserves, which in turn, will build you a large audience of buying customers that TRUST you.

About the Author: Want to get MORE 'Insider' marketing Secrets on How-To drive HUGE amounts of Laser Targeted Traffic to your website? Then you need to subscribe to Cory Threlfall's ezine called... The Internet Wonders eZine at -- http://www.internetwondersezine.com

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Are you fed up with Google? No good positions there even after months of work? Well, maybe you should start a little smaller and try to optimize your website for the MSN and Yahoo search engines first. Although they are a lot smaller than Google they still can send much valuable traffic and, the most important thing is, they are much easier to manipulate with some clever SEO work. In this article I will show you exactly which steps are needed to probably (of course I can't promise you results) greatly improve your rankings on the "2nd-tier" search engines.

On Page Optimization

So called "On Page Optimization" is the part of SEO you can change directly on your website (in the html code) like the title and headings. And although Google hardly cares for them they are very important if you want to rank well in Yahoo and MSN because those search engines lay much more weight on these factors. ere is a little overview over the most important ones:

The title: You should use your most important keywords in your tag as it's probably weighted the most. The best thing is to leave out any other words here.

h1, h2, h3: The headings are nearly as important, Use your keywords here again, but in a sentence structure.
alt, title, strong, b: It's not proven that those help with your rankings, but many people claim it, and using them can certainly not hurt.

Off Page Optimization

Like with Google, the most important thing to rank well in Yahoo and MSN are also incoming links. The difference however seems to be that those two care much more for quantity than for quality of the links. This knowledge can be easily used for your advantage, for example by using one of the link exchange programs like http://www.link-vault.com or http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/. Those will build very many links to your site in no time and therefore fool Yahoo and MSN.

If you did both things, optimized your webpages and built links to your site using one of the mentioned tools you can probably expect increased rankings on the search engines. At least it always worked for me and my websites this way.

About the Author: Thomas Höfter is the webmaster and publisher of http://www.metally.net/, http://www.blog.metally.net/ and http://www.smartphony.net/. You can find more of his articles and tips at his personal website http://www.lunaticstudios.com/.

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