Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It's a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.
The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don't be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.
The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. Make sure that you put some thought into the design of your website. You want to make sure that is has some "sticky" properties. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.
So let's get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.
You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to "Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State." BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the "Fine Alpaca Wool" category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.
You need to come up with a number of strategies to make sure you convince the website owner that it is both your interests to add a cross link. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. Make sure that you contact the website owner and let them know that you have added their link on your site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. Make sure you immediately let them know that you have set up the link to their site on you page, and have them check it out so they can feel comfortable that you are indeed helping them with their overall marketing strategy. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.
You need to let them know how much you appreciate them allowing you to set up a link with their site. Let the author of the site know that you have actually visited their site so they will know that you did not just randomly pick their site from a generic list. Make sure you send the link to the author of the website so they can check it out for themselves. You will not only benefit from this link strategy, but the linking site will also generate more traffic because of the way link popularity works. If the author of the website is not aware of or convinced of the benefits of link popularity, then make sure you describe the benefits in a brief overview, without getting too technical, unless asked for more information! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.
By the way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!
