MSN and Live are often not taken seriously by most folks. I have been a part of a bunch of SEO teams, and I remember every-time I brought up optimizing for MSN or Live.com, folks just considered that as a joke. But the truth is MSN.com and Live.com are still valuable, and with Yahoo! being oh so close to being bought by Microsoft, you could expect Live.com to become even more important for the future. It’s true that Google is still the king in the SEO town, but as most folks put their focus on Google, you can take advantage of that to optimize for MSN and get some extra traffic (for me personally, MSN + Live drive more traffic than anything but Google).

I know a lot of folks talk about how MSN system can be gamed, but in reality, you can optimize your site for MSN by putting some extra emphasis on on page factors. For instance, title, head, and bold tags do work well for MSN. In addition, your keyword density also counts towards a better ranking on MSN. While there are certain differences between MSN, Yahoo, and Google, the basics are pretty much similar. MSN does pay attention to internal links and more to incoming links as it’s not as sophisticated as Google in dealing with incoming links, but unless you push the envelope really hard, you are not going to hurt your rankings on Google by optimizing for MSN & Live.

At the end of the day, your focus should be on Google, but you can still get some top positions on Live or MSN, and there is no reason not to go for it. As the search industry becomes more competitive, you can expect the MSN game to get tougher as well, but you may as well play it now as long as you can.

In my mother culture, brides are warned about saying Yes to a proposal the very first time. I know it sounds stupid, but you have to actually wait 3 times before saying yes the last time. Of course, you don’t say no the other two times, but what happens if the guy doesn’t ask you the second time. Well, Yahoo! has said no for the first time to Microsoft’s marriage proposal today. But I am almost certain that Microsoft will not be accepting a no from Yahoo! that easily. Microsoft has got to have Yahoo! and that would include going to the the bride’s relatives to force the marriage. That’s what Microsoft’s strategy seems to be. Of course, at the end I believe $37-$40 per share would be enough for MS to buy Yahoo! but that is a fairly significant improvement over the original $31 per share offer. In the end, just like many expect MS to get the bride.

So much for Yahoo! being desperate to accept Microsoft’s friendly bid. Reports are now coming out that Microsoft will have to increase its bid to make the Yahoo board accept a deal with Microsoft. I am sure somewhere in Redmond Steve is furious with Yahoo! and is planning to move ahead with plan B. So what is plan B for Microsoft? Bypassing the board and going to shareholders. Microsoft is banking on the fact that investors are not satisfied with Yahoo’s performance. It’s true that many Yahoo! investors are almost ready to cash out and cut their losses, but Yahoo’s shares have gained some value after Microsoft’s bid, and Microsoft won’t be able to get Yahoo! for cheap. I do believe that a deal with go through, though not as early as we all think, but for Microsoft to come out of all this empty-handed is simply unthinkable.

It sure seems like it. The software giant has the ability to handle a big fish such as Yahoo!, but they rather use some leverage now with this acquisition. This shows Microsoft’s determination to be the best in a industry that is longing for a viable challenger to Google. I am sure Yahoo! will be reluctant to sell for the initial price offered by Microsoft, but I doubt Microsoft will go over $35/share to acquire Yahoo! Who would’ve thought a few years ago that we’d be looking at the end of the road for Yahoo! in a matter of just few years. How things change quickly?