Link Building Strategies are a very important aspect of SEO. Search engines like Google, use "link popularity" to evaluate and rank your site. Link popularity refers to the number and quality your inbound links from other web pages. Live Search, Yahoo and Google all pay attention to links and link popularity. Link building campaigns always start on your own website, many times with directories or paid listings because people don't want to link to a new site. I suggest new sites start out with high end directories and developing the right internal link structure. Make sure all links are relevant and working correctly (very important).
You should always give link quality more importance than link quantity. When building links for my own website, I use these same steps and ranked above web sites with thousands of low quality links. My search rankings were also for very competitive keywords. To achieve top rankings you need content related links and authority websites to link to your pages. The most valuable links for Search Engine Optimization purposes are those that come from older, well established sites within your sites theme and content. This will help to rank better for your keywords and to make your linking profile seem more natural to search engines. You should try to mix up your link text as well. Do not have all of your back links to your website using the phrase "SEO" or "Marketing" use a mix of link text. Example: "seo marketing" - "Internet marketing" - "Marketing SEO" etc. Linking opportunities are everywhere, you can get backlinks by publishing articles, press releases, directories, blogs or purchasing them. Be creative about linking, If you decide to purchase text links be very careful about it! When you combine quality content or a unique website with these techniques your link building campaign will be a success complimenting your Search Engine Optimization. The higher your website ranks and the more Google (PR) Page Rank you build will help you later in your link building strategies.
Reciprocal linking and link request are questionable for me. I have one website that's ranked highly for its keywords and key phrases and I receive a lot of email request from new sites and old web sites that have nothing to with my content about link exchanges. These websites are a waste of your time and will do you no good with the major search engines. Link requests should be from a site similar to yours to even be worth considering. Put a lot of time and effort into your Search Engine Optimization & "link building" and you will be able to see clear results that justify all the hard work. Keep track of your link building campaigns and your progress with free software and use Google web master account or Yahoo's Site Explorer.
Building Links and SEO are a big part of your website. Remember choose a good website hosting company or reseller hosting plan, build quality links, create excellent content for users, use the proper meta tag titles, descriptions, keywords and you will eventually have a successful website.