[pinkfluffybunny]

There is little return.

For someone just starting out in this here's what I recommend.

Do some homework. Look at your competition's websites - see what they did, find out what they offer and offer it, MORE IMPORTANLY - find out what they don't provide and provide it.

Look at their meta tags, look at their headers, links and construction of their pages. Don't copy it exactly, but use it as an example.

Make your pages load fast - I'd rather be number 7 with a fast loading page than number 1 with a slow loading page.

Entice people - don't think you can tell them where to go, what to see and what path to take to get there. Don't get fancy, keep it simple. They didn't come to your site to see how good a web designer you are. They came for a product or service.

Define your goals (a goal isn't - make money) One goal may be to increase conversion by 10% in 2 months, now form objectives to get there. Watch the sites stats to see if you have obtained the goal. If you haven't work harder, form more objectives.

Out work your competition and you will have a sucessful site. Exchange links and worry about PR and you will fail like 99.9% of the websites on the net.

The only people who worry about getting links are people selling them and people who fell for the scam.

NEVER - link to anyone elses site. If the information is worth linking to then it is worth putting in the time to include it on your site......Don't send your visitors away....

You want them to stay. Aways add new material and content (to reach your goals and to increase return visitors).

Get a good stats program like surfstats or webtrends and learn to analyze them.

Example if only 8% of your visitors ever see your home page - that's good. That means people are finding what they are searching for, they go directly to the page that contains the information and hopefully take an action there -

"Action?" they call you (have a phone number there) they contact you - contact information. Or they follow a link to an enticement you have on the page.

Out work your competition.

Remember you don't need to take on the world. You don't need to get all the traffic, just your fair share.