What's the most effective way to get my websites first on the Search Engines.

First of all you need a S.E.O. strategy, and that's different from a topic to another, but most of them have the same steps :

1. Research and reasearch some more. Don't even think starting the website just because the domain is available or you like how it sounds, because you will realize later that you have a domain name with a 300 mil. competitors in your market , and you're done (even if you have a high budget - excepting if you have Microsoft's). However don't go to far from the main website idea even if you can't find good key-phrases. Remember, a good domain name is a major factor in ranking (not the only one of course) . Choose as much as possible a domain name that is easy to remember . Don't use hyphen domains like i-have-a-big-name-but-its-keyword-rich.tld . Why ? Annoying , annoying and again annoying. Most of searches come from the engines , but if you have 10 uniques a day that type your url in they're browser , well small amount but still counts as traffic.

2. Unique content , I underlined it because it's very important. You want to rank not to get ignored or worst, banned. Write interesting content, and also try to use the proper keyword density (2% - 4%) for the targeted keywords / key-phrases. When you're writing the content, keep in mind that it should be as natural as forest, I mean never do something like : something something something KEYWORD something something KEYWORD ... Again you WILL get banned.

3. Backlinks - High PR, TrustRank, audience targeted websites.

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its simple do your website with full html and minimum images with alt text and more importantly link building

 

I've seen people offer $20 for a text link for a high PR site. So, generally how many of those links would you need to get a steady stream of traffic then?