Other than offering worthwhile content, there is no more important prerequisite to achieving high search engine rankings than getting good websites to link to yours. And, because it costs nothing, and is not difficult, all you need is a la few hours a week and a little persistence. The first step in any good linking campaign is finding websites which may be interested in carrying your link. Here's how.

One way is to use your favorite search engine to find websites with information closely related to the content of your website. For example, if your website is about plants, search for terms like "plants", "gardening", and "plant feeding" to find websites whose webmasters may be interested in linking to you.

Or, you can identify a few websites ranked highly for the search terms most appropriate for your site and find sites which link to it. You can do that by searching in Google, or Alltheweb.com for "link:" (without the quotation marks) and the complete URL of the website. For example, link:http://plantsandflowers.com (be sure you do not leave out the colon after the word "link").

Once you've identified the websites most likely to link to yours, visit them, obtain the email addresses of their webmasters, and send an email requesting a link. To be effective, your email must:

1. be brief, well written, and polite. Always use "please" and "thank you".

2. describe your site in no more than 50 words and explain why the webmaster's visitors would find your site interesting or useful.

3. offer the webmaster something in return. For example:

a. a link on your site.

b. information about how to submit their website to 300,000+ search engines, directories, and links pages for free. When they agree to link to you, send them to: .

Contact an average of at least ten webmasters a day, more if you have the time. With just a ten percent success rate, that will net you a minimum of thirty new links a month.

If you use the techniques above you should see at least small gains in traffic to your site in as little as thirty days. The more important benefit, higher search engine rankings, may take longer, depending on how competitive your desired keywords are. But, your search engine rankings should continue to rise as more websites link to yours and the search engines therefore perceive your site as being increasingly relevant.

Just hang in there and write to at least ten webmasters at appropriate sites every day...twenty would be even better...and your link campaign will boost your search engine rankings, resulting in significantly more targeted visitors to your site. And, targeted visitors mean profit.