1.Search-engine optimized text

2.Fresh content frequently

3.Links to your site from high-profile websites

4.Traffic to and from your site

The first two are all about how you put your web site together and subsequently work with it. The last one - quality inbound links- has nothing at all to do with your site, and if you work it properly, can give you both great rankings and pull in a surprising amount of traffic from sites other than search engines.

Once you start building up your traffic, your search engine ratings will stabilize, and your site will slowly grow. It's a lot like starting a car - it takes a lot of energy to get it going, but once it's running it only takes maintenance energy.

Most people don't know where to start with inbound links. Do you just email webmasters and ask? Buy advertising? Or do you offer your own site up as a link farm, encouraging your hard-won customers to visit someone else?

None of these are the best bet (though emailing webmasters, over time, is a good additional strategy). The best way you can get great inbound links is by using an article submission service.

These services use article directories, large online repositories of articles donated by webmasters like you, to build backlinks to your site. Each article you donate contains a resource box that points back to your website, in whatever format you desire. And you can donate the same article to hundreds of article directories.

You can do this yourself. But article submissions services know how to find the best directories, and have specialists who can enter your information in the often-tedious and time-consuming directories forms. It may be a better expenditure of your time to focus on that great content and building your business in other ways, while leaving the submissions to experts who can do it cheaply, efficiently, and properly.

Article submissions services understand the search engines and how they examine links, and can use this knowledge to benefit you. And because you can expect the search engines to change their methodology about every four to six months, with major changes every year and a half to a year, these services will always have the most up-to-date information on the best way to use links to enhance your placement.

While you may be able to build your website ranking yourself, it's often better to seek help from people who have done it for years, at least the first few times you submit a site. Article submission services are your perfect ally when you're chasing search engine rankings.

There are only so many directories you can submit to, of course. Once you have maxed out your directory submission, you can start looking for webmasters to trade links with. There are a few things you should seek out in this case. Your link partners should be suitable for you, and you should be right for them as well. You should trade up as much as you can; look for pages with good rankings themselves. Don't trade with a competitor; if you sell similar merchandise or if you're both close together using the same keyword phrase, you should trade with someone else.

But link trading only works once your site has been built up in the search engines. Few webmasters are willing to trade links with a low-ranking site (would you?). For the quickest rankings boost, and for a great foundation that you can really start to work from, use mass articles submissions. It will set you apart and above your competition.