MSN Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for 7.3m organic keywords and drive 19.7m monthly organic visits (traffic value ≈ $36.8m), with 0 paid search reliance in this dataset.
- Your authority is extremely strong (Authority Score: 97) backed by 353.6m backlinks from 722k referring domains—signaling massive trust and indexation power.
- Organic traffic is heavily brand-led: “msn” drives ~37% of keyword traffic, followed by “msn news”; your most trafficked page is the homepage (~9.5m visits, ~49% of total), with major contributions from Money/markets content, Play/games, and Weather pages.
Growth Opportunity
- Reduce reliance on branded demand and the homepage by scaling non-brand topic hubs where you already show traction (e.g., stocks/indices like “.dji” and “.inx,” weather, online/unblocked games, and broad news queries).
- Systematize coverage of high-volume, repeatable templates (market index pages, stock tickers, forecasts by location, game/category pages) to capture more long-tail queries and stabilize traffic beyond viral articles.
- Strengthen internal linking and international/localized expansion (you already have many regional sections in sitemaps) to push more sessions to deeper pages and improve distribution across Money, Weather, News, and Play.
Assessment
You already have elite organic visibility and authority, but traffic concentration around branded terms and the homepage suggests incremental growth will come from scaling non-brand, template-driven content and better distribution to deeper pages. The upside is meaningful because your domain strength makes new content rank quickly when executed consistently. AirOps can help you operationalize this kind of systematic content expansion at scale.
Competition at a Glance
Across 3 competitors analyzed (drreddys.com, aurobindo.com, cipla.com), msn.com shows an outsized organic search presence relative to the rest of the landscape.
MSN ranks #1 in organic search traffic and #1 in ranking keywords, with 19,650,325 monthly organic visits and 7,270,472 ranking keywords. The top-performing competitor in this set is drreddys.com, with 10,211 monthly organic visits and 2,723 ranking keywords, underscoring how large MSN’s lead is on both visibility and breadth.
Overall, MSN holds a dominant market position in this comparison set—capturing ~99.9%+ of the combined organic traffic—while competitors operate at a much smaller, niche scale with limited keyword reach and low visit volumes. The competitive dynamic here is less about closing a gap and more about maintaining and extending an already substantial lead in organic discoverability.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
This play transforms dense, technical SEC filings into structured, plain-English summaries and 'diff' pages that highlight changes in risk factors year-over-year. It targets sophisticated investors looking for quick insights into company health and guidance shifts.
Example Keywords
- "{company} 10-k summary"
- "{company} risk factors explained"
- "{ticker} 8-k explained"
- "what changed in {company} 10-k {year}"
- "{company} guidance changes"
Rationale
Investors frequently seek simplified versions of legal filings to identify material changes in company strategy or risk. By providing these summaries at scale, msn.com can capture high-intent financial research traffic that currently goes to niche financial portals.
Topical Authority
msn.com already demonstrates massive authority in the Money and Markets vertical, with existing high-traffic stock and index detail pages. Expanding into structured filing analysis is a natural extension of this established trust.
Internal Data Sources
Use a Knowledge Base of SEC filing PDFs, MSN's existing market data for price-reaction context, and standardized compliance/methodology libraries to ensure YMYL safety.
Estimated Number of Pages
300,000+ (Covering thousands of global tickers across multiple filing types and historical years)
This strategy builds a massive internal-linking graph that answers 'what do I really own?' by mapping ETFs to their underlying holdings and comparing overlap between popular funds. It captures investors in the decision-making phase of portfolio construction.
Example Keywords
- "which etfs hold {company}"
- "{etf} top holdings"
- "{etf1} vs {etf2} overlap"
- "{etf} sector exposure"
- "{etf} concentration risk"
Rationale
As ETF investing grows, users increasingly search for transparency regarding fund concentration and overlap to avoid over-exposure. This play creates a dense web of pages that provides unique utility for retail investors.
Topical Authority
msn.com's existing finance entity infrastructure (stockdetails/indexdetails) provides the perfect foundation for a comprehensive ETF database. Its high Authority Score (97) allows it to compete for these highly competitive financial terms.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage holdings datasets, MSN's real-time quote and volume data, and historical concentration logs to provide differentiated insights.
Estimated Number of Pages
500,000+ (Covering thousands of ETFs, their individual holdings, and pairwise comparisons)
This play connects msn.com's massive weather audience to high-intent home improvement decisions by creating localized directories for energy incentives (solar, heat pumps, EV chargers) tailored to specific climate zones. It provides unique ROI estimates based on local weather patterns.
Example Keywords
- "heat pump rebates {state}"
- "solar incentives {county}"
- "ev charger rebate {state}"
- "insulation rebates near me"
- "is a heat pump worth it in {city}"
Rationale
Homeowners often search for financial incentives for green upgrades but find information fragmented. By combining weather data with incentive databases, msn.com offers a unique 'climate-aware' perspective on home ROI.
Topical Authority
msn.com is already a dominant player in the Weather vertical. Using this authority to branch into home services and energy efficiency is a logical and high-value expansion.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize MSN Weather climate normals, a Knowledge Base of official federal and state program PDFs, and localized utility rebate data.
Estimated Number of Pages
150,000+ (Covering 3,000+ counties across multiple upgrade types and incentive programs)
This strategy creates a comprehensive, structured library of troubleshooting playbooks for Windows, Microsoft 365, and Teams error codes. It targets high-intent users looking for immediate technical fixes, driving them toward Microsoft's ecosystem of services.
Example Keywords
- "error {code} windows"
- "{code} microsoft 365"
- "teams error {code} fix"
- "one drive sync error {code}"
- "windows update failed {code}"
Rationale
Technical error codes generate millions of searches from users in a state of high urgency. Providing structured, step-by-step 'If/Then' flows allows msn.com to capture this traffic and offer relevant product solutions.
Topical Authority
As a Microsoft-owned property, msn.com has the ultimate 'canonical' authority to provide troubleshooting advice for the Microsoft software stack.
Internal Data Sources
Incorporate official Microsoft documentation, release notes, known-issues logs, and internal support Knowledge Bases to ensure accuracy.
Estimated Number of Pages
80,000+ (Covering thousands of unique error codes across various products and user scenarios)
This play maps professional certifications to real-world career outcomes, using LinkedIn data to show job demand, salary expectations, and common career transitions. It targets professionals looking to upskill and students planning their education.
Example Keywords
- "{cert} certification cost"
- "{cert} salary {city}"
- "best certification for {role}"
- "how to get {cert}"
- "{cert} exam requirements"
Rationale
Career-related searches are high-volume and high-value. By using unique LinkedIn signals to substantiate the value of a certification, msn.com provides a level of data-driven insight that generic career sites lack.
Topical Authority
msn.com's massive domain authority and multi-locale footprint make it a credible destination for professional development and educational reference content.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage LinkedIn data sources for skills adjacency and job demand, combined with MSN's multi-locale pricing and terminology data.
Estimated Number of Pages
120,000+ (Covering hundreds of certifications across thousands of metro areas and job roles)
Improvements Summary
Add crawlable landing-page copy, FAQs, and curated modules to the /play pillar, then expand category hubs like /play/racing with intent-matching text and curated lists. Apply a repeatable editorial template to individual game pages (How to Play, Tips, FAQs, screenshots) and tighten internal linking from pillar → categories → games.
Improvements Details
Update /play to include 250–400 words of unique copy, “Top Games” blurbs that link to game URLs, and an FAQ block with FAQPage schema targeting terms like "msn free games online" and "games on msn". For /play/racing, add 300–600 words aligned to "car racing games unblocked" plus static sub-hubs (e.g., /play/racing/car-racing) and “best of” lists; for game pages (Thief Puzzle, Basket Bros, 2-Minute Football, Bejeweled, Spider Solitaire), add 500–900 words with controls, strategies, troubleshooting, 2–4 screenshots with alt text, BreadcrumbList/VideoGame schema, and related-game links. Clarify duplication between /play and zone.msn.com with canonicals or redirects where equivalents exist, and refresh sitemaps and indexing controls for parameterized duplicates.
Improvements Rationale
Most pages in the cluster look thin (embed + minimal copy), so they fail to hit relevance and quality thresholds for competitive queries, keeping rankings on page 2+. Richer on-page content, targeted titles/meta, and FAQ sections improve query match and SERP CTR for near-term wins like "msn thief puzzle" and "basket bros msn" while building authority toward harder terms like "msn free games online". Canonicalization between /play and zone.msn.com concentrates ranking signals, and stronger internal linking improves crawl depth and authority flow to pages closest to page-1 positions.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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