In a hurry to ensure quick rankings in the search engines, and get more traffic, some web masters are ready to go to any length. I was called to a client to give presentation to a client who wanted his site to be listed at page one or at the most page two on search results with some leading search engines. I explained the all the steps that were required, offered them a decent bargain, which probably was just sufficient to cover my costs and suggested a time frame of about three months for very good results. My next competitor who was waiting to give presentation immediately after me, offered a much cheaper deal and amazing time frame of less than one week. No prizes for guessing who finally got the order and yes he managed too.

Higher search engine placement is substantially decided by number of quality links that a site has. Linking can be of natural, reciprocal, directory submissions and in some more ways. Not all the links can contribute to higher placement. Though, I personally believe that content is single major contributor and more unique and targeted the content, the higher the ranking.
In internet, traffic is the key. No doubt, good content would bring repeat visitors but how to get the initial visitors to appreciate the content. Unfortunately, there is no one way that would guarantee large traffic of visitors to your site. Submitting to search engines, unique content, meta tags, blah blah and so forth are just one of them.
What I have seen from my own experience, getting a good quality link is single important factor which works faster than any other method. The goal of trading links is to get quality links for quality links. A common mistake committed by some start up webmasters is to exchange just any link. It does not work and rather may do some harm. Reciprocal links are things of past and no longer the in thing. True quality links will carry benefits far beyond that of attaining a coveted position in the search engine results. The links will bring traffic from the Web page linking to your Web page. For better traffic, decide on quality of your link partners before exchanging links.