It is a truth universally acknowledged that webmasters seeking to build the prominence of their sites and their position in search engine results must of necessity engage in a dedicated link-building effort. All the search engines use the extent of inbound links to a web page as a means of assessing the value of that page, the logic being that if someone has bothered to provide a link to the page, there must be something worthwhile on it, and the more links there are, the more worthwhile it must be. Quantity, of course, is not everything, and the quality of those links is also important, measured usually by the Google PageRank of the page on which the link is located. A number of different programmes exist which will search for web for sites offering high PageRank and keywords similar to yours that might make attractive link partners. All you have to do then, so the logic goes, is contact the webmaster and offer to exchange links.
However this process is not as straightforward as it seems. Brand new sites that need links the most, and for which the marginal value of an additional link is highest, are the hardest to build links for, since the value of the links...