New small business - how to get attention?

how to get new commercial website to rank well

[majjk]

Hi,
Suppose I setup a new business that is to rely almost entirely on customers online, i.e. people finding the company via web search. So that would require decent search engine rank, which do require other websites to link to me.

Normally one would expect people to link to the website if they liked the website and find it useful. However, I guess that apply more to the kind of websites that provide something interesting, useful or fun... but that isn't really about purchasing a product.

What I'm trying to say is; how do I get people to link to a website that is simply selling stuff? If I would have a lot of customers then I guess that the links pointing to my website would start to trickle in, happy and satisfied customers linking, but that is not gonna happen before I rank decently in the search engines... which isn't gonna happen before I have a good number of websites linking to me. Catch 22.

I have tried adWords, but find it expensive and not resulting in a lot of purchases (not enough to cover advertising), so that route doesn't seem to work either.

How do one get people to link to purely commercial websites? Tips? Ideas?

[caveman]

Don't discount getting the basic links first if you've not done that. High quality directories for example. Friends' sites. You can get involved with related forums if there are any, and if you go lightly, attract some attention that way (don't just run around dropping sig's etc: Bad).

Then think in terms of partnerships. Are there sites that you could help in return for links/traffic back from them?

Cheap advertising can help. And using ppc even if at a loss for some period of time at least jump-starts your business.

You essentially need to think in terms of putting your site in front of people who may be interested.

Also read this post on Link Development Versus Traffic Development [webmasterworld.com]. One of my all time fav's here at WebmasterWorld.