Step 4: Spell and grammar check your message. This might seem like a funny thing to include here, but haste leads to errors and errors can erode potency of your reply.

Step 5: Print your message and read it out loud to yourself. Is it coherent? Have you addressed everything? Is your reply laden with sarcasm, anger or spite? If yes, Start Over.

Remember, you provide awesome customer service and will not be shaken by small minds or ill tempered customers.

Step 6: Sign your message. This is last thing that customer reads and if you blow this, everything said prior will have little or no meaning. Leave them no doubt that you are, above all else, a professional.

Step 7: Click send.

Yow! That feels good.

Two additional options that you may consider are...

Option 1: Call customer if you can find their phone number. You'll be blown away at how attitudes change instantly when your customer hears your voice live at other end of a phone connection. It's miraculous.

Option 2: Refund their money instantly. Cancel their membership. Remove every trace of their contact information from your mailing lists. AND MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE. In some cases this is prudent thing to do. You won't please everyone, and 14 different email messages over course of 8 days isn't worth $19.95 sale. Cut bait and run.

You try to make your customers happy. You sincerly WANT them to be pleased with your products and service. You go out of your way to provide quality and integrity in everything you do.

Outstanding! Keep up good work.

For outbound links it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a web site but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. They do not add to your link popularity though.

Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature i.e. most probably created by communication between owners of both sites.

How to build link popularity:

So it is quite obvious that to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways:

Directories: Directories are categorized listings of links from around web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.

Site content: The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content then others sites may not link, including directories. Most of top ranking web sites today got to top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kind of links.

Emailing web site owners: If you come across a listing of links on a web site other than a directory e.g. a links page on a somebody's personal web site, it can do no harm to write web site owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link in return but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. I have got many links in past using this method. In my email I always ask them to visit my site first before making a decision to link and I personalise each email with a comment or two about their site.

In Conclusion: The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.