It's now common knowledge that inbound links are ridiculously important to the success of your site. Receiving a link is a 'vote' in a search engine's eyes, and now energy seems to be (necessarily) focused on how to obtain as many links as possible. But there is more to it than that, and the right amount of links, the right kind of links, is just as important and overlooked by eager newbies wanting a quick boost in rankings. It will take time and know-how to develop links more naturally and in such a way that you get the most bang for your buck.
Of course, it goes without saying that your site should actually be worthy of the Top 10. So step one is to truly focus on your site from a visitor's point of view, not a search engine's exclusively. Only gaming the system will get you nowhere. It may get you temporary results, or it may get you banned from Google's index, but it will not work long term.
That said, you still have to do a ton of work that you would not normally do for visitors only, if you want to rank for your words. It is just not possible to build a site just for visitors and expect to rank. MAYBE if you have 4 years, MAYBE if the nature of your business coincidentally is one that demands new content naturally for visitors, MAYBE if you are such a huge authority in your field, if your field happens to be something worth linking to, MAYBE then you can just randomly and naturally build up enough inbound links to rank high enough to turn a profit. But what if you sell socks? I mean, how much content can you possibly 'naturally' put on your site about socks? Is it really helping your visitor? And how many websites in the world are just dying to link to your fabulously well written valuable articles (1-2 new ones a month, right?) about socks, choosing a color, knee socks vs. crew, etc. It is all just fluff, and this is what the search engines want (expect) us to do.
It is reality that the incoming links are an integral part of this manipulation of your campaign for the search engines. Your link building campain will include the natural links that occur by chance (or by link baiting, adding lots of content and press releases and viral marketing). And you should balance this with a large volume of small links and a handful of heavy duty links from higher PR pages, or from some EDU links or GOV links. The sites ranking high in results have plenty of links, most likely a portion of them are paid links, it is just reality.
The basics for a good link campaign: Well rounded, and well timed. A variety of links from numerous sources, some from authority sites and some from new sites and blogs. Watch not to build too many too fast, a spike will be detected. Keep anchor text relevant but varied. Use internal pages as well, especially high content pages. Links embedded in relevant content are hands down the most valuable, strive for as many as possible.
Sounds like a lot of work? The best link building is just plain time consuming, there is no way around it, and more and more companies are hiring it out in some fashion.
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