The search engines look for certain aspects of a web page site’s content as to its relevance to the search term entered by the user. If the web site's pages that have been indexed by the engine match the term, the page is displayed on the results page. How high it ranks in the results will depend on how the information viewed by the search engine relates to the search term as well as how popular it views the page’s content. The popularity of a web site is determined by the number of links to the page from relevant web sites offering similar or related products or searches, when compared to other pages. For instance, all other things being equal, if one page has 100 relevant links from other pages and the second page has 105, the second one will come in higher in the search engine ranking. Thanks for letting me share....

While in-links are definitely a big aspect and very important, there are variences between the search engines that should be considered. For example, to be found on Google, one must be aware of the Page Rank of the sites linking in for they can have a strong bearing on your sites Page Rank, especially for a new site. Though only a part of the algorithim that Google uses in placing your site in their listings, your page rank is very important. Try to have sites link to you that have a PR of 5+ if possible. There has been talk in the recent past that Yahoo was also going to implement some form of PR system as well. I don't know if it has or not as it has been a while since I heard about it.

At the same time, it's important to not get too focused on Pagerank.

For example, one's Pagerank does not always correlate with where one's site appears on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). I'd rather have my site #1 for my primary keyword and have a PR 4 than have a PR 6 but appear #5 on the SERP for my primary keyword.

Another point to keep in mind is that paying for links from high-PR sites is frowned upon by Google and recently might have caused some sites to lose Pagerank in the late October '07 Pagerank Massacre (AKA Pagerank Slapdown, Pagerank B---- Slap, PR Meltdown--Take your pick of terms!).

Tons of info regarding recent PR shakeups in this blog post on SearchEngineLand, including links to many other relevant blogs.

All the Best,

Mark