While you are waiting for the search engines to get around to indexing your site, links are the best way to get traffic to your site in the early stages. At the same time you are laying the foundation for your climb up the peak of Search Engine Success as many of the search engines include the number of sites linking to your site (and to a lesser degree the number of site links out) in their algorithmic formula for calculating their rankings. As AltaVista puts it:

"A site or a page is "good" if many pages at many different sites point to it and especially if many "good" sites point to it."

How to Get Links? 

First you want to hunt out sites that will complement yours. Look for similar (yet non-competitive) sites. Sites that already have a Links page will be much easier. Then you need to contact the site owner or webmaster. Here is where you can practice your sales skills. 

Visit the Examples Page for sample e-mails and additional tips.

Once you've gotten the link, how to most benefit:

Direct from Altavista:

"If webmasters at other sites heed your suggestions and change their pages, be sure to go to AltaVista and add a URL for each of the edited pages, so you can benefit from those changes as soon as possible."

Why wait for them to get their site indexed again? You can submit their site for them as AltaVista suggest above. You don't have the time to do this for every site but a large site that already ranks high will certainly improve your popularity. The sooner the search engines recognize that link the sooner you benefit.

Final Note:

Check your links pages regularly, a dead link is frustrating for your visitors and looks unprofessional. Also some sites will change and may take off your link or you may no longer wish to associate with them.

Summary:

• Links early in the game will bring more traffic than the search engines

• Those same links will help you rank higher in the search engines

• Use a sample form email as in the examples to improve your results and speed up the process

• Promote the best of the links to the search engines directly

• Maintain and upgrade your links

Proceed to Step Six:

Navigate the Newsgroups