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I decided to write this article because I am tired of reading useless articles about SEO for MSN, in which I struggle to find even one genuine tip. Tips such as “optimise title tags, keyword density is important” and so on are completely useless because there is nothing like “a title of 6 words is worse than a title with 5 words within”, or “each important word’s occurence should be between 3% and 4%”. All you can find are outdated or overly-general tips.

In this case, I am going to show you two examples of how websites (the second example is from another website that doesn’t belong to me) achieved higher positions in MSN. Please be patient, as I am going to explain you every step in detail. First, as an SEO newbie, I tried everything from putting words into the first and last sentences and paragraphs, and also tried to increase the density of important words up to 8% or so. I tried to modify meta description tags to see if it helps, I put words into bold, italic, h1 and h2 headings and so on. None of these methods worked the way I wanted. I have heard that it is easier to get good rankings in MSN than in Google. Eventually I gave up on MSN and focused solely on Google, until now.

All that has changed during the last few months was the geographical location of my website (aqua-fish.net), but look how it affected traffic from MSN:

I moved the site to the USA in August 2008 and it took more than 4 weeks until changes were obvious in the rankings. Of course, I am expecting higher traffic from MSN as time goes by. Bear in mind that the statistics from the last day (on the image) aren’t complete yet, therefore October 23th doesn’t look as good as days before.

Since nearly every website is hosted in the US, not every webmaster can use this technique. The second key area is your domain name. The domain name plays a very important role in MSN’s algorithms. A few weeks ago I sold “security-doors.org” to a friend of mine. Look at its rankings in MSN:

It is 6th. Moreover, the site is already receiving traffic from MSN, despite there being no content at the time of writing. But what is amazing about this fact? First, that the website has no content whatsoever (though the new owner is going to publish technical articles here eventually). Secondly, the domain is still very young (it is ranked nowhere in Google). Third, that the website has only a few incoming links (I linked to that domain from one of my sites when I bought it). Despite all this, it is still ranked 6th for a competitve search phrase. This means that if your website receives little or no organic traffic, and if you do consider buying a new (keyword-rich) domain, that it will have no negative effect in MSN.

I could test things such as filenames, title tags, meta description tags and many more, but I suppose it’s roughly the same for every search engine. The goal of this article was to show you the two most important factors in SEO for MSN.

Now I’m wondering how my submitalink.net will be ranked for phrases “submit a link” and “submit link” after MSN recrawls it…

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Every webmaster faces the problem of increasing their site’s traffic. Moreover, this traffic needs to be targeted in order to assure that the traffic will generate conversions (whether you’re aiming for sales, clicks on ads, or whatever.) Basically you can choose one or more methods to improve your rankings, and thus your traffic. The first and the easiest is to buy traffic: it’s possible to get 10,000 guaranteed visits for about $8 or $10. But, think… if it’s so easy to get 10,000 views, why not buy 1,000,000? The problem with this kind of traffic is that your web site is shown to people who are not at all interested in your site, and these people may often be paid for having a browser window open. In these cases, the browser is open, and websites load for between 30 and 60 seconds each. So, your unique “visitors” are paid simply for having a browser open. All in all, you will gain nothing from this in the end, and your money was wasted. For example, try to open www.surfjunky.com. It promises money for surfing, but no-one has ever been paid (Google the phrase ’surfjunky scam’ for proof of this.)

The second way to increase targeted web site traffic
Pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-impression (CPM) advertising programs work well, though you may be concerned about click fraud or the reliability of the company you are dealing with. Some advertising networks allow you to show ads as a pop-up window, or proxy web sites. All this costs money, but there is one simple way to get targeted visitors to your web site for free. Let’s talk about it:

The easiest and the guaranteed way to increase traffic on your web site
It is SEO. However, I am not going to share the usual theories about what SEO is, or how to do it. Instead, I am going to show you a method that cannot fail. There are slightly different techniques, depending on certain conditions, but the general process remains the same. So, if your web site already receives some organic traffic, you should check your analytics and find search terms that lead to your site. Otherwise, skip this section and move to the next paragraph. So, returning to the original point, these phrases can be from Google, Yahoo! or MSN, or from a cross-section of search-engines. You simply need to find phrases that contain question terms: which, who, what, why, when, etc. Now, answer some of these questions and publish the answers on your site. Since all questions have already been asked, it is very likely they will be asked again. After new pages (I strongly recommend that you only publish one Q&A per page) are indexed by search engines, your chances of further visitors are much higher. However, this may not bring an increase in sales. So what is the ultimate point of this strategy? If new visitors come to your site and find it useful, they are likely to link to it. Your web site will garner more and more links as the number of answered questions increases. The more incoming links your web site has, the better positions in search engines it receives. Higher positions mean increased targeted traffic. It will be targeted because you’re targeting each page to a specific kind of visitor. Informative pages are for those who want information, product pages are for those who want to buy things. At the moment you just don’t have enough top 10 positions. With question-and-answer pages, you can! If you’re wondering how many visits a web site can receive via “question-like” phrases, then skip the following paragraph (it’s for those with low organic traffic) and check the snapshots. Bear in mind that if you answer only 5-10 questions, your web site will not receive a large traffic boost. Try to think in terms of thousands of questions, and everything will make sense.

Now imagine that your web site receives little or no organic traffic. In order to increase it, you need to analyse what people want the most. They’re often looking for answers, because the internet is full of free information. If I had to start a web site from scratch, I’d use the question-and-answer format. It’s impossible to predict all potential questions asked, but you consider what is likely, and you cause Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. So how easy is it in reality? Look at the snapshot below, and you can see the potential of this technique. Then, re-read the paragraph above, which will help you understand how it all works.

And now some more snapshots, from the statistics for aqua-fish.net. Snapshots show traffic between September/16/2008 and October/16/2008.

Of course, some phrases may be sections of longer phrases. For instance, “who” is a part of “wholesale”. It’s up to you to select the phrases, but this SEO technique can bring real results very fast, because people often neglect to focus on long phrases. However, rankings for short phrases usually come after those for longer phrases.

Answering questions is a tedious and ultimately endless process, and your time could be wasted for several weeks, but building a website’s traffic through satisfying visitors is the best way to achieve your goal. Of course, there are many ways to increasing your traffic, which I will focus on in later articles.

If you are planning to sell your website, make sure that you really have no other option. Selling your site is a worthwhile way to escape from income or traffic fluctuations. This is why you rarely earn more than 20-25 months’ revenue when offering your site for sale. Brokers know this, and you can’t expect them to behave any differently. Before I move on to my strategy, allow me to demonstrate with an example: a couple of months ago I sent an enquiry regarding www.aqua-fish.net to one company. They were generous and offered me £16,000. I chose not to accept this offer for a few simple reasons. Firstly, I had plans for the site, including an investment of £3,500-£7,000 in order to increase revenue (I am now finished with the investment and it is generating revenue as time goes by). So, from this point of view, when you know that a minor investment will generate more money in the future, why would you choose to sell the site now? Secondly, I was aware that the time is the best factor in SEO, and that therefore my current traffic was not the peak for the site. Now, several months later, I can honestly say that I was right. Traffic has increased by an additional 20% since then. Third, what would I do after receiving this £16,000? It is easy to spend it then, but my website would no longer belong to me, so I’d have to create a new project. No-one knows how things will develop in the future: there is no guarantee that I can build a website with similar success. These three reasons played key roles in informing my decision to reject the company’s offer.

Instead of trying to earn a smaller amount right now, you should always think about potential. Once you understand the potential, and can accurately appraise your website, then should reject any offer lower than 25 times the net monthly revenue. Of course, an important prerequisite is that your website must be worth investing in. Don’t wait for someone to offer you £100,000 if the site only draws 1000 visitors per month.

The first rule of selling your website
Always sell a fully-developed website with real organic traffic. Organic traffic, as frequently mentioned in this blog, is free traffic from search engines. It is very difficult to attract thousands of unique visitors to your website each day, but this is the first pre-requisite to succeed in selling. You could have developed a fantastic core with unique features and technologies, but as long as there are no visitors, such a website has no value.

The second rule of selling your website
Original ideas are worth much more than duplicate websites. If you’re starting just another phpBB forum, it can be hardly worth millions. I can buy a web-hosting and a domain-name and install phpBB there. Then I can start an AdWords campaign in order to generate some traffic and some active members. But you can do the same thing, and the guy next door can too. Anyone can do it. In the past, when web-hosting wasn’t available to everyone, it was easier to think of a unique idea. Now, times have changed and anyone can start a website, copy and paste articles from other websites (although it’s illegal!), and make money on the internet.

Unique websites are the only ones worth buying.

The third rule to sell your website
Now we’re finally coming to “how” instead of “why” and “when”. After your website becomes more established, you may start to receive offers from other websites in your site’s niche. Often, these offers come from online stores. For example, if your website is focused on mobile phones, then you’ll receive offers saying, for example, “place a link pointing from your website to ours and we will pay you” since online stores all want to be well-ranked in search engines. After 5 or 10 such enquiries, it is clear who has money and who has not. For example, if one website offers you a link for £5,000 per year, and another offers £500, it’s clear which is the one with the funds, and the potential to buy out your site later.

At this point you should create a list of potential buyers. In order to succeed, they must clearly understand your website’s traffic. Nowadays there is nothing better than Google Analytics for tracking visitors. Be prepared to offer them access to these statistics (Google Analytics allows you to share your websites’ data with others). As you probably understand, it’s a good idea to sell your site to a company whose business is focused in the country that generates most of your traffic. It makes little sense to sell a website with a primarily UK-based traffic to a company dealing with customers from Australia. Always make sure that you’re handing over your site into the right hands.

You can start building your list of buyers using Google, though you won’t have any idea about ability and willingness to buy. Companies which are ranked above your website are unlikely to be interested in the additional traffic, especially if your site’s traffic is lower than theirs. And companies which are ranked below your website could be having difficulties finding money to invest (as rankings determine traffic and traffic determines sales). This is why I had to mention the first two points: your site will only be bought when it’s worth it.

Now let’s analyse why it’s wiser to offer to companies instead of brokers. A broker doesn’t usually sell online. That’s why they’ll often offer 25 times your monthly income. They will just take the site and let it earn, without further development. Compare this to a company dealing with real products: again, we’ll use the mobile phone example. If you’re earning £50/day from advertising, then the company would turn off the ads and use the space to sell their own products. In this case, I guarantee they’ll earn more than £50 a day. Even though some days will be better than others, they are unlikely to lose money, assuming you sold them a website of good quality, with organic traffic and search-engine authority. Moreover, such a company will continue selling well beyond the next 20-25 months.

The fourth rule of selling your website
As stated above, you should contact potential buyers directly, preferably through email. I don’t like auctions because they tend to be full of brokers and worthless websites. Instead, establishing a personal contact will help lead to deeper discussion. Your email should contain these facts: when you started the website, where it is located right now, how much your hosting fees are, what technology is used (PHP and MySQL for example), and how much bandwidth per month it uses. These details should be mentioned after more important facts, such as why you want to sell your website, why you started it, and how it can help the buyer to reach new customers. All this information is more crucial in the initial email than discussion of price.

Never mention the expected price in your first email. This is not advertising, you’re not selling ad space or links. One seller could offer you more than you can imagine, and another one could offer you a tenth of what you expected. You must be prepared to accept that the sale may not happen. It all depends on what the potential buyer wants to do with your website, and their plans for monetising it.

Payment
As in every business, payment is the most dangerous part of the deal. It’s hard to know when to transfer the domain: after receiving ½ of the price, ¾ of the price, when? It is very difficult to make this kind of transaciton online, so ideally you should meet the buyer personally. Sign an agreement, have it verified by a third party, and never trust the buyer 100%. I strongly recommend that you transfer the domain only after receiving full payment. If buyer is serious, he will understand this point of view. Otherwise, you’re taking a huge risk.

Further support
Many unique websites are built upon specifications that differ from ordinary scripts available on the internet. In order to ensure continuity, you will be probably asked to create some kind of documentation, or to help the buyer after the sale. Depending on traffic, core and plans, you could spend 10 days helping the new owner with maintenance, or 200. You must clarify these terms before selling: either that you will be paid per hour for any further help, or that you will include futher help in the selling price. If you don’t, you could yourself spending many days working for free.

The final word
Selling a website isn’t always a wise solution. If your site works and still generates traffic, you should consider maintaining ownership for the next few years, as you never know what’s going to happen in the future. As time goes by, more and more companies will invest in their online presentation, and may need links or advertising. Also, methods of revenue-generation may change and the income could improve. Selling is only really right for those who are being offered £75,000, but preferably £500,000 or more.

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In order to create a website you should understand (at least) HTML and CSS. With HTML you use elements, and with CSS you define the design of your website. It may sound difficult, but learning HTML and CSS will make everything related to your web presence much easier. There are many websites explaining the basics of HTML and CSS, so I’m not going to start teaching. Instead, I am going to tell you why you should use HTML and CSS instead of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. In the second part of the article I will explain why programming languages such as PHP and databases such as MySQL are also useful in building a website.

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Advantages of HTML and CSS:

1) You can control every aspect of your website’s code. This is important because absolute control is what you need. Other advantages stem from this: by comparison, WYSIWYG editors tend to generate unnecessary code, making the code longer, slower and harder for search engines to analyse/follow.

2) You are able to ensure that your site’s code is as clean as possible, keeping its size down (good for visitors with slow connection speed), and you can be sure that the website (from the end-user’s point of view) contains only the necessary information. Unlike WYSIWYG editors, human-created code allows you to delete, modify, and add things directly. For example, often when you delete content from an element in a WYSIWYG editor, the element itself is not actually deleted. Thus, the website may contain empty elements: tables, div tags, paragraphs, and so on. While this usually has no effect for the end user, it can have an effect on search engine rankings.

3) You can place any element anywhere, so what appears first on the page for visitors doesn’t necessarily have to appear first for search engine crawlers. This isn’t at all black hat (it’s legitimate, because the web page contains the same content for visitors and search engines), and it can help SEO since it is generally considered that the content closest to the beginning of the page is the most relevant, and is treated as more important than subsequent content. WYSIWYG editors don’t allow you to use this particular SEO technique.

4) Further coding is much easier if the code is human-created. Some webmasters outsource projects to foreign countries, but if your programmers need to use a WYSIWYG editor, it is often more expensive and your choice is more limited, because editors cost money, and not everyone will have the editor you need. If you outsource, always ask for manually-created code, rather than something generated via a WYSIWYG editor.

5) CSS code should be kept in external files. This makes the updating process easy, since you can easily modify everything from the colour scheme to the layout as a whole. WYSIWYG editors don’t always create external CSS files, and when they do, the code isn’t usually optimised. CSS optimisation is required because visitors don’t generally want to wait for the layout files to be loaded. For example: if your CSS files contain 200kb of data, it is possible to divide it into 5 files, so that each will contain approximately 40kb of data. Clearly, 40kb is more user-friendly than 200kb. However, this optimisation is not usually possible with a WYSIWYG editor.

6) With human-created code you can achieve complete cross-browser compatibility. If you know only how to use an WYSIWYG editor, it is impossible to achieve 100% cross-browser compatibility. As you may know, Microsoft Internet Explored causes problems for many web programmers. Combined with a WYSIWYG editor, it is nearly impossible to create a well-presented web design that works perfectly in all major internet browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.)

Disadvantages of using HTML and CSS manually
1) It requires no knowledge to create a website in the WYSIWYG editor.

2) This first advantage is actually the only advantage.

What is the difference between HTML and PHP, and what are advantages of PHP programming?
PHP is a server-side scripting language. You generally use PHP without anything to do with HTML, but you can also use it to generate HTML code. Moreover, you can also use PHP to generate CSS files. What’s the purpose of generating CSS via PHP? Say you want to modify colours or font sizes, preferably with a single simple change. This is not generally possible with a static CSS file, due to the necessity of further declarations for ordinary elements and for form elements too. The same applies to colours, andlikely to all other elements/classes. In addition, if two or more classes depend on each other (say that the font size for one element is 150% bigger than another), an ordinary CSS file will struggle to resolve this.

PHP is a scripting language, and HTML is a Hypertext Markup Language. Visitors of your website will see HTML, but they will not see any PHP unless the site is hacked/vulnerable, or unless it displays its source code.

PHP brings numerous advantages to the process of creating a website. The first advantage is ability to create content dynamically, and thus to make the website user-interactive. Consider a simple scenario, when a user wants to log in into a members’ area. This is impossible without server-side scripting. It doesn’t matter if it’s PHP, ASP, or any other language, but simple HTML cannot create this function. PHP and MySQL are the most used technologies for serving dynamic content.

So if you don’t yet know HTML and CSS, you should start learning. If you want your site to stay up-to-date, this is essential. Otherwise you’ll need to invest in outside expertise every time it’s necessary to something to your website.

Sometimes, though, a WYSIWYG editor is perfectly suitable for the task: if you’re not building a business-oriented or large-scale site, but rather a simple personal site that isn’t intended to showcase your skills or sell anything, you can use a WYSIWYG editor to create a site without much knowledge or investment. Otherwise you have only two options: learn or invest.