MSN (Live) Rules
Microsoft has recently re-launched its search engine under the name “Windows Live Search.” Previously known as MSN Search, Windows Live isn’t as popular as Google but it has a large enough market presence to warrant careful optimization efforts.
So what does Windows Live want from the sites in its index? Here are some guidelines:
1. First, review the general guidelines for all search engines
2. Limit web page size
MSNbot prefers short HTML pages with about one topic per page. According to Windows Live guidelines, an HTML page without images should only be 150 KB. This is a good guideline to follow for search engines in general. Keeping your pages focused on one or two specific topics is more likely to achieve high rankings for the keywords on those pages.
3. Flat navigation
Windows Live Search prefers sites with a flat navigation, which means that all pages are fairly easily accessible from the main page rather than hidden in a deep hierarchy. Try to make your web pages no more than three links away from the main page of your site.
4. Review your web site description
If your site is listed in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), Windows Live will display the description you have on ODP for your site in its search results. If you want to prevent this from happening, use the following tag:
If you include the above tag on your web site, make sure you create a good meta description tag with relevant keywords as an alternative.
5. Update your site often
An extra tip for Windows Live: Keep your site fresh! MSNbot tends to re-index sites with frequently updated content more often.
Yahoo Rules
Like Google and Windows Live, Yahoo wants informative, content-rich sites in its index. To improve your chances of ranking well on Yahoo, follow these guidelines:
- First, review the general guidelines for all search engines
- Meta tags
There’s been much debate about the usefulness (or uselessness) of meta description and keyword tags. Since Google doesn’t index them, many webmasters have abandoned the practice of creating meta tags for their sites.It’s time to reconsider both the meta description and meta keywords tags! Yahoo indexes and uses both – especially the description tag. To give your site the best chance with all three major spiders, craft a relevant, keyword-rich description and a keywords tag filled with your most important terms. Yahoo encourages webmasters to create a different meta keywords tag for each page of the site rather than using a general set of terms on all pages.
- ALT tags
Accurately describing images on your site using ALT tags can help those who use text browsers view your site. It can also boost your rankings. Yahoo indexes ALT tags and recommends using relevant keywords when creating them. - Unique content
Like other search engines, Yahoo would like sites in its index to have unique content. If you have many duplicate sites, consider removing them before submitting to Yahoo. This guideline also applies to the two other crawlers – MSNbot and Google.
Yahoo says it best in their guidelines: Create “pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary.” Ultimately, every search engine would prefer if webmasters followed this golden rule.
Google Rules
More than any other search engine, Google is helping webmasters and search engine marketers keep better track of their sites in Google’s index. The past few years have seen a variety of tools and help from Google aimed at making it easier for site owners to get their web site indexed and ranked.
But before using the many resources that Google has available, make sure that your site is compliant with Google’s technical and quality guidelines. You can access the full list here.
Important Google guidelines:
- Review the general guidelines for all search engines
- Create a Google Sitemap
Google now offers a variety of tools to communicate with site owners. One of these – Google Sitemaps – can help you tell Google’s spider which pages you’d like included, their importance and how often you’d like your site revisited.For more information, visit Google’s Webmaster Tools.
- Use relevant keywords on your pages
Ask yourself how you’d like your customers to find you and make sure that these terms are included on your pages. You can use Google’s Webmaster Tools to see which keywords are viewed as important for your web site by Google (choose “Page Analysis” under the “Statistics” tab). - Use text, not images or Flash
Don’t hide your keywords inside images or Flash files. Search engines can’t see this text, which means that it doesn’t add any relevance to your pages. - Use Lynx to check your site
Google offers a very useful tip for webmasters: Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check how search engines view your web sites. If you see that your keywords are hidden behind JavaScripts or template files, redesign your site so that it becomes easily accessible to a search engine spider.
If you’d like to have your site indexed and ranked by Google, we recommend making use of the numerous resources Google now has available for web site owners:
- Google Webmaster Tools
Includes Sitemaps, Page Analysis, crawl statistics and other tools - Google Help for Webmasters
Comprehensive FAQs for web site owners - Google Webmaster Blog
This is an official blog maintained by Google for webmasters. It includes tips, latest news and updates - Google Webmaster Discussion Group
This discussion board is moderated by Googlers. You can ask general questions and talk to other site owners about Google indexing and ranking issues - Matt Cutts
Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google, blogs about Google, SEO and other things. Unlike the Google Webmaster Blog, Cutts’ blog is unofficial, but it still has plenty of useful insights and tidbits.
