The number of other sites that link to your Web site is highly important today to many of the major search engines: Google Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, and WebCrawler. If you have lots of sites linking to yours, your site is considered 'relevant', significant and deserving of a top 10-30 rank.

If you don't have many links...

You've got to be concerned about this NOW. The Internet is becoming increasingly competitive,

and at the same time is swelling in size. Search engines are continually refining the way they determine top Web site positioning, but count on this:

Link relevancy - the number of sites linking to yours - will play an increasingly important role. There are three key ways you can generate links to your site.

The number of other sites that link to your Web site is highly important today to many of the major search engines: Google Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, and WebCrawler. If you have lots of sites linking to yours, your site is considered 'relevant', significant and deserving of a top 10-30 rank.

If you don't have many links...

You've got to be concerned about this NOW. The Internet is becoming increasingly competitive, and at the same time is swelling in size. Search engines are continually refining the way they determine top Web site positioning, but count on this:

Link relevancy - the number of sites linking to yours - will play an increasingly important role. There are three key ways you can generate links to your site:

1. Develop Your Content

If you make it worthwhile to link to your site, 'they will come'. According to Forrester Research, continually adding high-quality content accounts for up to 75% of repeat visitors to your site. Creating a resource area for people and encouraging them to link to your site will generate a certain number of links back to you.

2. Be Proactive: Ask For Links

Find sites that reach the same audience you do, and ask each individual Webmaster for a link. Obviously, this will work only if you are not a direct competitor of theirs, AND you offer something of genuine value which they don't already have on their site. Carefully tailor each request you make to the individual site, and indicate on which page of the site you feel your link belongs.

Obviously, these two steps are very labor-intensive, painstaking and will eat up considerable time, which is why the third way to generate links to your site is an excellent (and quick!) option.

3. Get Involved NOW with a Good Link placement service.

There is no faster way to increase your link popularity and search engine relevance then to get involved in a good link placement service. But be careful: most of the free-for-all (FFA) pages will drop your listing very quickly (often within hours). Rather than spending endless time posting over and over to multiple FFA sites, choose one that retains your listing and work it to your advantage.

Look for a link placement service that rapidly submits your site to a large number of link pages, then retains your site for an extended period of time. In this way you will increase your visibility for the search engine spiders which will result in significantly better positioning on the major search engines.