Once you have a website design that you are pleased with and have built the site using search engine friendly techniques, and have optimized your content then the task of link building can begin.

This concept revolves around major search engines having a scoring system that involves looking at the inbound links to a website and the link structure of the site itself. If all pages were created equal, the search engine has the task of figuring out which website should rank higher. This in short is based largely on what websites link to you...kind of like using them as a reference. Depending on how relevant those sites are to yours, the way they programmed the hyperlink, and what the score of their website is determines now usefull the link is.

There are many directories, partner websites, and related sites to get links from, but not all links are created equal.. Many sites will allow nearly anyone to post links and will allow them from many different types of websites. This practice is often termed 'link farming' and will hurt your site more than help. Understanding who to get links from and who to stay away from is going to be a key factor as a negative link can be very hard to remove and the effects could last a long time in some cases.