The process to building backlinks can be a rather slow, laborious task. For most people, backlinks is vital when building up a small, fledgling website! There are a lot of different services, tools and methods people use to build backlinks fast which tends to work in their favour, in the short-term.
Google ranks links determined of the websites pagerank. Having 100's of pagerank 0 websites link to you means nothing compared to one pagerank 9 link. Buildings these links can be a pain, especially when using so-called 'seo backlink building services' which tend to give your website spammy backlinks, which actually DEVALUES your website. I've fallen victim to one of these packages before, one that promised quality backlinks that actually gave me terrible ones in the long run. As a test, Google moved by pagerank right down to 0 once it detected these.
If you want to build good backlinks, then you must have time or a dedicated team of professionals to help build for you. The most essential, VITAL piece of help I can give you is to produce good content. Good content will get organic traffic, make people want to share your link and promote your website entirely free! A good example would be websites like kokatu which is a BLOG but it reports the latest and rumoured news revolving around games. This pulls in a lot of interested readers and they get backlinks entirely from good content. The key is to write about something you enjoy, you're knowledgable about and you know it hasn't been done 100x.
This is not saying that you shouldn't write about things that other people already have done, for example, I posted a Youtube video that reversed a piece of music but someone else had done this 3 months prior to me. They only had 500 odd views, mine had 0. I knew if I could promote my video and get more people interested in it, I would become more popular despite them being older. I ended up posting on websites that were interested in the genre, I promoted it on other videos and ended up getting 5000 views in under a week. Keep to this rule, if you can write it better and more interesting, then do it. If they have posts that are poorely written and not being promoted well, then create yours and do it better. If they have a piece of well written, well promoted, popular post, then don't copy it. Doing this will produce you backlinks and of the good kind.
The other and more simpler method would be asking the owner of other websites to link to you. This reminds me of the late 90's webring phenonema, where a lot of websites would join webrings to get more visitors. This only works if you have a real niche subjects yet closely related. If you're a small website talking about Health, then link-exchanging with a website about games won't do you any favours. Most small websites are likely to accept your offers, but try to keep these links to a minimum. A lot of websites known as link farms operate entirely through this method and can harm your website.
Submitting to directories has been subject to many debate, some people believing this will improve your traffic whilst others are a little more dubious. The truth is that submitting to spammy, 0 pagerank, 0 traffic directories is as much use as trying to dodge rain. Try to aim for the bigger, more well-known ones to get any value out of your submission.
Forums generally allow you post a link in your sig. This helps if you visit the forum often and act as an active member. Being active on a forum is key to actually getting something out of your sig-links. Try to be strongly opinionated, start debates and stand out. Even if this is fake, this will naturally get more people interested in your person and end up gaining more traffic to your website through the link as people decide to think 'What is HIS website about?'. Sticking to a forum that is based around the 'genre' or style of your website can be the most key thing. Like I said earlier, posting in a health forum with your games website link won't help at all. Try to make your links fit for purpose, give them value and a good reason to be there.
Lastly is the most common of all link-building methods, blog commenting. Comment on blogs around your website genre (If it's politics, post on politic blogs or post, if it's health, post on health, etc) This will not only insight the author to reply to you, but you'll always gain the curiosity of other readers to click on your link. Comment something good and worth while to read and people will come.
I hope these tips have helped you a bit! If you have any more questions, then please do not hesitate to comment below!
