This question might be better posted at a forum that deals directly with internet issues.  Take a look at http://www.tek-tips.com

Tek-Tips is the place, but while you are here, this is a very informative article:
http://www.bruceclay.com/
 

There are many pieces that need to come together to get decent search engine placement.  It's not a simple task.

First, you need to be indexed in the search engines.  That requires that you submit your site to the search engine so that they can decide whether or not to list your site and where to put it if they do.  Some sites require you to submit each page rather than just the homepage, and some will block you from doing so.  Some sites will list results out of their own database ahead of those that they've found by crawling the web.

The next step is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  That requires identifying the keywords that are not only representative of what you do, but are also likely to be queried by your potential visitors.  Those keywords must then be interspersed through your website in appropriate places.  There are a number of things that the search engines look for and their rules change almost constantly.

Once optimized, there are three areas that search engines look at to determine where to place you amongst all of the sites that result from the query:

The first is the size of your site.  The more pages your site contains, the more important it appears to be to the spiders/bots that the search engines use to crawl your site.  The size can be enhanced artificially, but you need to be extremely careful about how you do that to avoid being banned by the search engine.  

The next area is the number of links pointing to your site. If there are a lot of other sites pointing to your page, the search engine will see that page as more important than those with fewer links.  The primary means of getting links pointing into your site is to submit your site to a large number of search engines and directories.  Some of these engines and directories will hold your link for a day, some a month, some longer.  You need to know the rules for each of the engines to make sure you submit often enough, but not too often.  Submitting more frequently than their rules allow will get you banned.

The last area is the number of links pointing out of your site.  Again, if you are pointing to a lot of other information, your site appears to be more informative and thereby more important to the search engines automated tools.  This is a bit limited though, because the links must be appropriate for your site.  A link from an engineering firm to a hot dog vendor, for instance, wouldn't be seen as relevant, and may damage your placement even if the others make sense.

The long and short of it is that search engine marketing is a full time job, and it's best left up to the professionals.

See www.ngenware.com.  This is an automated tool that does all of the above for you, and does a nice job of getting placement.

Bill Marzich
Buckeye Engineering Services & Technologies, Inc.
www.bestengrs.com

It is no longer just the number of links pointing out of your site, too many web sites have long links lists just to use this facility. Now it is about crosslinking i.e. the number of links from your site to sites that link back to yours and the prestige of the site. For example, cross linking between your site and a firends doesn't carry the weight of a link to www.MSN.com, for example, and back again.
This was the status at the last update of the web site i listed above.