Help My Site is Dropping in MSN

[powsurfer]

Can anyone help / enlighten me...

Our main site www.snoventures.com for several years has been coming at either position 1 or position 2 in MSN.
We update pages every few weeks, but just recently, or since the introduction of 'Live Search' seem to have dropped significantly for our main search term 'ski chile'.
Now on the the .com search we only appear on page 4 and that not our index page which is optimised with no html errors or warnings. e.g. www.snoventures.com/contact.htm and www.snoventures.com/links.htm both of which have recently been updated, so expecting these to drop even further soon.
On the .co.uk search we come on the first page at about no 4 but again not our index page. e.g www.snoventures.com/skichile.htm then nothing for at least ten pages.
The pages that seem to appear are always the older ones with html errors/warnings.
I am puzzled by this and obviously hoping to get back to where we should be as the no1 source for 'ski chile'.
BTW: We are still appearing in the top 5 on Google.
Any pointers at all would be much appreciated.

Regards
Powsurfer

[Webnauts]

Did you read my manual about SEO for MSN? http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=51

[powsurfer]

Hi Webnauts
Many thanks for your prompt reply.
I had looked at the manual and believed I was somewhere near.
It prompted me to remove any non ski or travel links from the 3 main links pages and links from these to 2 other free for all links pages. Although these are still on the server they are no longer linked to nor do they appear in the sitemaps.

After using the link to the analyzer tool it has prompted me to make some changes, including aiming for keyword percentages between 3 and 6%, which I am on with now. I have also downloaded the Web CEO which I will use as it seems a very powerful tool with many great features.

Thanks again
Powsurfer

[Webnauts]

You are always welcome powsurfer. :)

And good luck with MSN. ;)

[powsurfer]

Much appreciated

Powsurfer

[incrediblehelp]

What is the deal wiht these foot results?

site:http://www.snoventures.com/

[powsurfer]

Hi Incrediblehelp,

This is hosting of a friends website that is waiting to be moved, I had actually overlooked this and maybe should move it now. Do you think it could be harming the ranking?
I hadn't realised Google would pick up pages not linked to. Thanks for highlighting this for me.

Powsurfer

[mtuba4u]

The real question is whether your scores have droped or other peoles scores have improved.

The next big question is what is your scores for link popularity, and do those sites linking to your main landing page have any common key words so as to increase link value, or are they completely off target.

Search engines have recently (Six months) introduced a sysyem of evaluating imcomeing links and scoreing them according to degree of target match, including key words in meta tags, total word matching, and a few other criteria. Some of these scores fall into the negative action sector and deduct from the total scores aloctaed for various items such as key words, page title, page descriptions, page content, alt tags for images, comment tags within the HTML code, and other hidden information within the HEAD section of your pages.

Sites with many incoming links that are coming from link farms will soon notice that they are dropping out of the race, as these are now scoring less and less according to some sort of sliding scale.

You will definately need to increase the number of inbound links from other domains, as this is becoming ever more important, especialy if the other domain is related in some way, such as common geographic location, common key word base for page, sub web and main domain.

these are all tricky things and need constant evaluation.

[powsurfer]

Hi mtuba4u

That's really useful and well described. I had heard of these changes for link relevance but not in detail which you have covered very well. Looks like I have a lot of work to do for MSN.
I have a good number of relevant ski links however I did have a number of unrelated link exchanges, so I need to work on the ski links to.
I have already been doing some work on the head / meta tags, and will be working on the content some more.
Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction to continue with this work and giving me some confidence that the work is not in vain.

I am still a little puzzled as to why the back pages with no incoming links and html errors are featuring above the index page that does have a lot of relevant ski links. One reason I guess could be that I am being penalised for the unrelated incoming links, which I think is open to abuse - you could sign up your competitor if no reciprocal link is necessary.

Thanks again

Powsurfer

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by powsurfer

Hi Incrediblehelp,

This is hosting of a friends website that is waiting to be moved, I had actually overlooked this and maybe should move it now. Do you think it could be harming the ranking?
I hadn't realised Google would pick up pages not linked to. Thanks for highlighting this for me.

Powsurfer

Sure irrelevant links wont help you and I have even heard whispers from SE's like MSN that they can actually hurt you. Now I have not bought into that completely at all, but your goal should be to get links as relevant as possible.

[powsurfer]

It appears that may be happening with our website, not sure how to get them removed though. May just have to outweigh them by adding more relevant ones?

Thanks again
Powsurfer