You definitely need top rankings in Google, Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, and other major search engines. When people search using keywords through search engines, you site should feature in top-most positions in the search engine results. You have done many fundamental SEO works from the past steps. However, that's not enough! There is one more very important job that you should do all the time. The more is the better! 

The Link Popularity 

A successful web site must have high link popularity!
All major search engines rank web pages based on the number of links that point to them. Google uses link popularity as the most important factor when ranking sites. Yahoo, HotBot, AltaVista, MSN and others also use link popularity in their formulas. If you want to have a successful web site, you must have high link popularity. High link popularity is important for high rankings on search engines. The higher your web site ranks on search engines, the more customers you'll get. 

How Does Link Popularity Work? 

Here's an example of how I believe link popularity works:
Let's say that Jack's Pizza Palace Website has a link to Mike's Men's Clothing store site. If the link uses the keywords "men's clothing store" in the anchor text (the clickable part), it may help Mike's link popularity a little bit for those keywords. However, Mike would benefit a lot more if the same link came from a site that was more related to Mike's site than a pizza palace. For instance, a more related link might be from a woman's clothing store, a men's shoe store or any other type of store that relates to clothing in some way.  

Tips for Link Popularity Campaign 

1: Budget time for link building

Don't expect to grow your link popularity overnight. Budget time every week to work on link building. If you force yourself to spend a couple hours a week on link building, it will become part of your routine. Pick one day a week and set aside time as your "link building time." If you don't make it a priority, it won't get done.

Link building is an incremental activity. Over time these one or two new links start adding up until they are hundreds or even thousands of links.

2: Establish realistic link goals

Don't expect to see instant results. Link building is difficult, frustrating and time intensive. Convincing another web site to link to you can be exasperating. If you get one good quality link a month you're doing better than the majority of sites out there.

Patience and creativity are key to link building. Track your progress so you know who you've asked already. It could be embarrassing to ask a site for a link if they've already given you one.

If a company initially declines your link request, wait a while and then ask again. Their company focus may change over time. A "no" today may change into a "yes" 6 - 9 months later.

3: Link with High Quality and Meaningful to Your Websites

Be selective about the sites from which you request links. Search engines use sophisticated rules when judging the importance of a link, and the popularity of the site linking to you is a key criteria. One link from CNet is worth far more than a link from a personal web site.

And don't even think of using a link farm! Link farms are sites that exist solely to link to other web sites. Link farms are a blatant attempt to inflate your link popularity, and search engines take a dim view of them. Google in particular has been known to ban sites found using a link farm.

Try to identify non-competitive sites in the same field as your site. Links from sites that are related to your area carry more weight than sites from Aunt Sue's favorite horse site. That doesn't mean you should refuse a link from Aunt Sue, just be aware it won't help you much in link quality terms. On the other hand, links from sites within your industry are strong endorsements for your site.

4: Contact to Targeted Sites

Before you ask for the link, get to know the web site. Establish yourself as a real human first. That way, when you ask for a link, it's harder for them to say no.

Impersonal broadcast emails asking for links are spam. Sure, it's easier, but it will only result in making another company mad at you. Spam link requests do not work and waste everyone's time. Don't do it!

5: Get Directory Listings

Jumpstart your link campaign by getting directory links first. This is especially important if you have a new site or a site with no inbound links. A shortage of inbound links puts your site at a severe disadvantage because link analysis is an important part of every search engine's ranking algorithm.

The way to overcome this disadvantage is to get a few quality links. A good way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into the better.
A few to target include: Open Directory, Yahoo, LookSmart, Zeal.com, Joeant.com, Business.com

Be aware that most of these directories require you to pay for a listing. It's worth the expense.

6: Consider Bartering for Links

It's a good idea to have something to offer in return for a link. Many sites won't link to you unless you link back to them or otherwise make it worth their while. Create a Resources or Partner page that allows you to have a place from which you can easily link to them.

You might also offer to work a barter arrangement with them. If you have a popular site with their target market, they might consider free advertisements in exchange for a link. If the link is of great value to you, be prepared to give something back. 

Other SEO Resources

Google Webmasters/Site Owners Help

Back to Step2: Register to Major Search Engines

Google, Yahoo and MSN are the major search engines in the world. It occupied 99% of the search engine market. As such, they provide good webmaster management tool to track your website traffic. Google is the best one which provides comprehensive features for webmaster. We encourage you as a webmaster to complete the following tasks for all these three search engines.

Submit Website to Google

Register Google Webmaster Tools

 

Submit Website to Yahoo

Register Yahoo Webmaster Tools

 

Submit Website to Bing

Register Bing Webmaster Tools

Back to Step1: Keywords and Contents       Go to Step3: Achieving Top Ranking

So you think you have completed your website? Is that all?

 Not yet!

On the left Google search result screenshot, you can see that the text "Design-HTML Programming - Web Development - Web Site Design" is used as the hyperlinked title of this page's listed in Inchol's results. In review, think about the key terms you'd like your page to be found for in crawler-based search engines, then incorporate those terms into your Page Title in a short, descriptive fashion. That text will then be used as your title in crawler-based search engines, as well as the title in bookmarks and in browser reverse bars. The Page Title should not exceed 100 characters.

Build your titles around the top two or three phrases that you would like the page to be found for. Just like the newspaper headlines. Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Think about the words(keywords) users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your content of each page actually includes those words within it. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.

The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content.

In order to achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.

relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success

Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term.

The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred to you. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available online and for download that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed.

The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can be bid on.

In addition to examining log files to see what terms customers are using to find a website, visit competitors' web sites and examine their meta tags for additional terms, use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your meta tag keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.

Keyword Tools

KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds.
http://www.keywordtumbler.com

TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion tracking and optimization tool.
http://www.thedowser.com

WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information!
http://www.wordtracker.com

Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it's searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Overture Keyword Tool - After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well.
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html

Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new online tool for webmasters. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time.
 
For example, if you type "bass", Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar". Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming", "programming languages", "progesterone", or "progressive". You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had.
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items of interest on the net, potential customers will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic.