OK,let's see a show of hands:How many of you are reading this book because you want a #1 rank in google? Yeah,we thought so. As SEO consultants,we know how good it feels when your website makes it to the top of the heap.
Google displays sites it believes are authoritative and relevant. They measure relevance by analysing page content, the words you and I read, and they measure authority (mostly) based on the number and quality of other pages linking to the pages they show, links are like votes.
http://www.lancome.com/
Correct, links are important but don't confuse quality with quantity. 10 or 15 links from quality relevant resources (pages) to your page will have a much bigger impact on how your page ranks than a 1000 low value links as sold by lots of SEO companies. In fact, if an SEO company offers you a set number of links for a set price run a mile, they're spammers!!
Instead seek out great links from other great sites, so long as you've got something worth linking to because great sites don't link to poor ones, why would they?
Create a great site, provide something people need and are looking for and share your site with other great sites and you'll quickly start to see your website traffic increase.