If so, Adam Audette has you covered. He has put together an exceptional (and incredibly comprehensive) post called "The Fundamentals of Link Building" over at his blog. The post is about a month old, but if you haven't already spotted it, it's well worth a read. Adam breaks link building down by topic and includes dozens of links to tools and resources aimed at helping you through the process.

Adam offers up a good reminder on why links are so important.

Links are now a major commodity. It wasn't always this way. In the pre-Google era, links were about sharing resources and getting traffic.

Today, links are about traffic, sure, and they're about sharing - but they're also about search engines (especially Google).

Links have two primary audiences: visitors and search engines. You want the traffic and credibility association good links can provide for your visitors, and you want the rankings boost good links can provide for the search engines. Learn to distinguish between these seemingly disparate audiences, but don't forget this guideline: develop your linking (and marketing) strategy with people in mind, not search engines. Just don't be blind to the search optimization factors involved.

While the article is fairly lengthy, it's packed with information. You'll find Adam's fundamentals of link building, a breakdown of the components of a quality link, insight into the importance of link neighborhoods, advice on building links strategically and tips and tools to help you put it all together and get started.

If you're just starting to dive into the world of link building, this is a great primer. If you've been link building for a while and are looking to take your efforts to the next level, this article should inspire you to try out some new techniques.