As most people are aware, the number and quality of websites that link to your website is an important and significant factor in determining your search engine ranking.  Search Engines like Google count the number of links your site receives and apply a weighting to each of these links dependent on the site on which they are located.  For example, a link from the BBC website will carry a much higher weighting than a link from another local business.
 
 
What constitutes great design is a subjective debate and often varies from industry to industry. However, I am often asked - What's your favourite business website? (in other words, what's your favourite website that's trying to sell you a product or service as opposed to a News site such as bbc.co.uk or a Social Networking site like Facebook) Now, by design I mean 'look and feel' - there are of course many other factors that should be taken into account when building a website, not least 'ease of use'. However, the look and feel of a site is something that a user will garner in the first few seconds that they are on it and if they don't like it, they are unlikely to go any further.