Times when you could rank well in Google on purely scientific on and off page measurements have come and gone. These days search engines tend to follow the end user and this is the primary reason why link reputation weights approximately 90% of all SEO you do on your business site.
Sites that are referenced a lot and discussed a lot are the ones that will progress in the SERPs.
Most SEO is conducted with little attention directed towards relationships; strangely, because marketing is all about networking and building relations.
Before having a link make sure you’ve established a relation. Basically this should be the philosophy of rookie online marketers.