MSN penalising for non-relevant reciprocal links

Has your website experienced a slip in rankings in MSN recently? This may be due to the relevance of your reciprocal links. Donna Fontenot (otherwise known as DazzlinDonna in various search engine forums) reported in her blog SEO Scoop that MSN are apparently penalising websites for non-relevant links.

In Donna’s post she speaks of a friend whose website has been apparently penalised in MSN. This friend had correspondence with MSN for several months to find out why his website was penalised. After months of only receiving auto generated e-mails he finally made human contact with MSN, who alluded to a probable issue with a links exchange directory he had on his site.

Donna’s friend eventually got a clearer response from MSN. MSN stated that his website was acquiring links either through posting or exchanging non-relevant links, which were considered spam.

Personally I think handing out penalties to websites with non-relevant links is a bit excessive. And how strictly do MSN rate the relevancy of your links? Can an SEO website only link to other SEO websites? Or can they link to hosting, web design and directory websites?

Donna is well respected in the SEO community and I greatly admire her myself for being a female SEO. In South Africa our SEO community is growing steadily, but we are unfortunately still lacking in female SEOs. Read Donna’s original post including the snippet from the e-mail that MSN sent her friend: “MSN support rep on link exchanges and penalties”.

Related articles:
"Best link building for Search Engine Optimisation"
"Backlink Analyzer 2.0 Released"
"MSN – Get your site indexed"
"Google speaks out on "excessive" reciprocal linking"