Beginner SEO Tip: Link Building
The most important aspect of SEO is incoming links, this is far and away the biggest factor in determining where your site ranks. The search engines need a way to determine which the best and most relevant sites are without actually visiting them all. The way they do this is to create an algorithm that ranks sites. This algorithm makes the not unreasonable assumption that the best sites will be the ones with the most incoming links.
Of course it isn't as simple as getting as many links as possible, where the links come from is even more important than the sheer number. The ideal link is one that comes from an authority site that is on a topic that is related to yours. An authority site is one that has a lot of incoming links itself. A link from a related high authority site is worth dozens of links from low authority unrelated sites so these are the links you really want to get.
Not only is it important that you get the right kind of links it is also important that the links you get use the proper anchor text. Anchor text is simply the text used as the link, it needs to use the keywords you are targeting. The search engines will use the anchor text to help them determine what your site is about so it is important you use your keywords. To a large extent the text used will be beyond your control since most of the links will be put up by other webmasters, but there are things you can do. One of the best is to use the keyword you are targeting in the title and if possible the URL of your website. Usually webmasters will use your title or web address as the anchor text. A title that includes your keyword is a lot more useful than some clever title that doesn't.
Building links is a tedious and time consuming process that unfortunately has to be done, but you can also hire companies to build links for you. A lot of webmasters try to get other webmasters to trade links. This isn't particularly useful since two way links have little value, the search engines know full well you are trading links in an attempt to rank higher. One way links have much more value, the most common way to get these is by commenting on blogs or by writing and submitting articles. These links are more useful than two links but they still aren't great. As a rule of thumb the harder it is to get a link the more valuable it will be. Since all webmasters can get links by commenting on blogs or submitting articles they don't have a ton of value. The best link is one that comes from a site that doesn't have a lot of outgoing links. The way to get these is usually by having good content that webmasters want to link to.