What is a (good) link?

A link is a vote from another website to yours. Its someone else saying; 'Hey this content is pretty good'. Ranking is ultimately a popularity contest, so arguably, the more people say you are pretty good, the better, right?

Well, no; A link is like a vote and not all links (votes) are created equal. A link from an unrelated website to yours, or from a site that is somehow engaging in unethical activities, is not worth much. You could ask your friend to create a link to your website, but if he sells fishing gear online and you are a tax consultant, then Google will have a hard time establishing relevance.

Ideally, all your links should come from relevant and trustworthy websites. This will have the most positive effect on your rankings in Google. So try and get links from people in your industry or field of work.

An often overlooked component of link building is the 'company you keep". When you try and get links from a particular site, you have to also ask yourself, "am I in good company on this website?" If all the other links on the site are going to poor websites, you are "poor" by association.

How many inbound links?

How many links should I try and get to my website is a question many people ask.

The number of links is secondary to the quality of the links you get. But to give you some sort of benchmark, I'd say you should try and aim for 250 to 750 UNIQUE links.(unique means you count a URL only once)

Remember to not build your links too quickly. Google WILL give you call.