How Search Engines Rank You
Depends on Link Popularity

The need to be popular didn't end when you left high school... for website owners it's actually become a necessity! 

Link Popularity is a new method the major search engines are using to separate out all the riff-raff on the web. There are hundreds of thousands of new websites entering the web each day and I'm guessing less than a third are quality sites. In order to meet searchers' needs and keep them from going to competitors or giving up in frustration, the engines need to be sure they're serving up relevant results. 

Not surprisingly, the major search engines are filled to the brim with substandard websites, and they need a way to make the cream rise to the top. Ergo - A site nobody else finds worthy of linking to is not worth a high ranking in SE's databases. 

Here's how it works.

When you submit your site to the major SE's (which you can do yourself or have me do at no extra charge as often as monthly), they will send out their "spider" to "crawl" (index) your site. However, some major engines such as Google won't add it to their database until someone else links to it. Even one external link starts a website on the road to being found in Google and other SE's that place an emphasis on Link Popularity.

So start wracking your brain to think of everybody you know with a website and ask them (bribe if necessary!) to feature a text link to your site. No, you don't need a banner. Even small ones tend to be ignored more than text links. 

*IF* possible, ask your friend/associate to put the link somewhere relevant, not just in a collection on a Links page. The first page is the primo spot, preferably with a little blurb about your site. 

If the friend's site is listed in the major search engines, it's even better for you. It doesn't matter what the site is about but of course if it's in any way related it would help your popularity factor. The inverse is also true. I wouldn't recommend a G-rated business site accept a link from a porn site. 

And whatever you do, don't submit your site to an FFA (free-for-all) or any link exchange/link farm site. The quality of their outbound links gets diluted the more they have. The search engines are well aware of this shortcut people try to take to make their links popular. 

Your traffic logs will show you whenever someone follows a link from another site to visit yours. However, you might want to keep track of each site which links to you so that you can monitor the link placement and any changes they make to their site which would make it undesirable to be linked from. And of course, in the spirit of cooperation that is the essence of the Internet, offer to provide a reciprocal link on your site!