For some reason, search engines feel that most popular sites are most worthy of more advertising by being placed above all others. You may sell better widgets, but if you don't have links to your widget page, other widget guy will be placed higher on search engines.

Don't be discouraged. Fight fire with fire. It isn't always easy to get people to link to your site. One way is to put a "Link to Us" page where it is easy for people to pick up HTML links of buttons or banners, so that they may share your site with their own site visitors.

Here is an example of one site: http://www.XpectMore.com/linktous.htm

As you can see, there are banners, buttons and even simple line text that will link item to any page you point it to.

NO, don't bother! It's a waste of time, and you'll probably just receive lots of spam.

Instead, submit your site to major search engines and directories, monitor results, and resubmit only if your site isn't listed yet. (You have worked hard on page content, page title and keyword and description meta tags, haven't you?) Repeat this process for any new content you create.

You can use an automatic tool, or you can hand-submit to each site. The latter approach takes more time, but at least you can be sure your site *has* been submitted!

Either way, site-submission process doesn't take long, but it may well take a few months before your efforts are rewarded by search engine traffic. But rewarded you will be - search engines are still best way of getting site traffic, for least cost!

=> USE THIS SITE SUBMISSION RESOURCE

Use Jim Tools site submission tool. This fantastic tool allows you to submit your site to all major search engines and directories (excluding human-edited directories like Yahoo!, Looksmart, and DMOZ - you have to visit these sites directly. You must now also visit Alta Vista directly, too.)

Jim Tools is a highly popular destination with webmasters and site promoters world over; so you can be sure that submission tool is kept up to date. (Hence it is best to visit at a less popular surfing time of day!)

http://jimtools.com/submit.html

=> OR VISIT THESE LINKS

AltaVista http://add-url.altavista.com/cgi-bin/newurl?

AOL Search http://search.aol.com/add.adp

DirectHit http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html

Excite http://www.excite.com/info/add_url/

FAST Search http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html

HotBot http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp

Lycos http://www.lycosuk.co.uk/service/addasite.html

Looksmart/MSN http://search.msn.com/addurl.asp