Once you have a web site, you will see that there is only one thing that really matters: traffic. Silly spending the time and money setting up a fantastic web site if no one's ever going to come looking.

We will do a basic submission of your site to the major search engines. If you choose the Maintenance Option, we will do it regularly. But, the fact is, most traffic comes not from search engines, but from links. Links to your site from other sites are far and away the best way to bring visitors. How do I know? Because I check my stats. I can see for my self the breakdown. Out of a hundred visitors to my site for example, maybe five or six come from a search engine. The rest have dropped in because they saw my link somewhere else.

This is where your job comes in.

Only you really know who you want to link to. Over the months I have linked my guitar book site to scores of other guitar sites, often exchanging links. 'You link to me if I link to you'. I have a 'Links" page at that site dedicated to links. There is a whole world of 'Top 100' sites out there to link to. There are Web Rings to join. In fact, I have created a new Web Ring - The Slide Guitar Web Ring. They bring traffic. There are guestbooks to sign at other people's sites. Your site's address will appear with your entry as a link. If you've written an invitation, you'll get visitors.

Most linking requires some knowledge of HTML. See our One Off Updates option if you need assistance. There are many, many html tutorials out there, try this one. You'll find that very few requests for an exchange of links are declined. The more the merrier, everybody agrees.

When I put my book site up a couple of years ago, I sat around for weeks waiting for something to happen. It wouldn't show up in searches, no visitors came, no books were sold... I persevered however, linking to every site I could, signing every guestbook I stumbled across, joining every ring and community I found, submitting columns to newsletters, ripping mp3s. Now I get thousands of hits per week -- growing as we speak.

Here's a tip: get in the habit of bookmarking sites you find interesting. Make a special folder for them. Follow them up. Some make it very easy to make a link. Others require an email contact.