A good back linking strategy that has worked for them?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Nick Ker: Best strategy: don`t "build" links artificially by paying for them, putting out junk content (including spamfographics), guest posting solely for links or anything else that does not have some value other than the link.
  
  Instead, focus on being the best at what you do, and making your website the best it can be. Then think of online marketing as public relations - find ways to let more people know about your business and site.
  That`s a very broad overview, but the truth is there is no single formulaic strategy that will work for everyone, like "do 1 press release, 18 blog posts, 1 infographic, 4 guest posts, 1 video, 247 tweets, comment on 50 other blogs per month.."
  
  Googles view is that links act as endorsements and signals of relevancy when they occur naturally.
  You can`t strategize something that should happen naturally, but you can strategize how to make it more likely to happen.
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  Nick Ker: How do you suppose those sites became so big? By being very good at what they do. You can only buy so much credibility online or off. People catch on eventually.
  
  There are plenty of legitimate yet "easy" links, like real directories, your social media and other online entities, and sites within your industry that may want to link to you. There is nothing wrong with going and getting those very appropriate links. When it gets to the point that you are strategizing where you will get links, what kind, how many, what keywords, etc, there is a good chance your time and money will be wasted as Google figures out how to filter out more complex artificial tactics. And, search engines aside, if the site doesn`t live up to the expectations of being the top search result, people will move on.
  On the other hand, people like quality - whether it is content, a product, service, or just really good branding and marketing. And they like to tell people when they discover something cool - sharing, Tweets, Likes, and sometimes links. That is why search engines use links (and now social signals) as a popularity indicator, not because they wanted to start an arms race to see who can get the most links.
  
  I am not just tossing out theories here, like most SEOs seem to do at times. I have helped sites/organizations go from 10 visits per day to being among the leaders in their industries with little more than a handful of the legit links mentioned above being the only ones I had to build And maybe a real, non-spammy news release or two.