How to get your site indexed on MSN
By John Hicks
Managing Director, Headline Promotions, Press & PR
MSN is one of my favourite sites. When I was asked for advice on getting a client's website indexed I sent them the following information which I would like to share with you.
MSN offers you two different ways to get your site indexed, and you should submit to both. However, before you do that, make sure that you have optimised your website first.
You can get more information on optimising your site for MSN, as well as tips on search engine optimisation, here:
http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm
The tips that you will find here basically apply to optimising your site for any search engine, but they are definitely worth the read so that you focus your search engine optimisation efforts in a way that will get your site indexed.
As I mentioned before, there are two ways to get indexed by MSN. The first involves submitting to the Intomi index. The Intomi index actually powers the MSN search.
Inktomi is now also part of Yahoo. However, you should still submit your site here. This will allow you to get indexed by hundreds of sites if your site is accepted.
http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm
You will need to use a valid email address for your site. Make sure that you use an email account that you actually use so that if there is a problem, you can promptly fix it. You may also need to confirm your submission.
Keep in mind that there are no guarantees on turnaround, and there are also no guarantees that your site will be accepted.
The second part of submitting to MSN is actually submitting to the MSN spider. This is the number two website on the internet. It gets an enormous amount of traffic, and the traffic that this site brings you can help you with both your rankings, as well as being found by searchers.
Use this link to submit directly to the MSN spider:
http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
If your submission is successful, you will see a message that tells you your submission is successful and will ask you if you want to submit another site. Once you have MSN crawling your site, you shouldn't have to resubmit.
If you follow these steps carefully, you should have no trouble getting your site accepted.
But remember the golden rules - create great content, build links back to your site, and target the correct keywords - and you can get very high rankings.
Now, make yourself a cup of coffee and sit down and make this happen!
This article was featured on www.amazines.com (Web Marketing) July 2006
