A guy going by the nick “sitemaker” posted the following list of link building criteria in this thread over at Webmasterworld. Here are the relevant bits:

I pay no attention to PR and especially Alexa

Relevancy is everything, you just got to make sure your links are on the right pages ie.

1) Title tag containing relevant keywords
2) Relevant keywords in the url (but not so important)
3) The general theme of the site is better than just the theme of the page, but I still exchange links if just the page is relevant.
4) Outgoing links all pointing to similar topics, not pointing to off topic subjects
5) Pages with limited amount of links not 100’s
6) Cached in Google, Sometimes I consider pages not cached and these still appear as backlinks within Google’s Webmaster area.
7) I generally stay away from directory pages listed as /YourOnPage234of ThisCategory.php

Following this, I can get sites on the first page with just 2 or three backlinks meeting the criteria above.

Okay, pretty basic, but there’s genius underlying its simplicity. This list clearly puts ALL the emphasis on relevance to your target keywords, and not just with link text and on-page criteria, but with careful analysis of the page you’re seeking a link from. 

The meat of the list is in 1 through 4. Let’s say I was seeking links to this page (I am, BTW. Feel free to send some juice my way.), what would be the best link I could get?

1. Offsite Page Title
   a. SEO Blogs That Don’t Suck
   b. Modern Link Building Strategies
   c. Directory - Online Marketing

2. Offsite Page URL
   a. blah.com/seo/link-building
   b. blah.com/directory/search-marketing
   c. blah.com/happyfunball/poo-pants

3. Offsite Primary Theme
   a. Halo 3 Cheats
   b. Copywriting for the Web
   c. SEO

4. Offsite Outbound Links
   a. Link building article at SEOMoz, article on Google PR update and its potential relationship to paid links at Searchengineland, link baiting thread at some forum or another
   b. List of several links to sites that broker text link sales, List of links to free to submit directories, list of links to automated exchange management software
   c. Links to DIGG, Reddit, del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, and the rest, links to blog announcement sites, link to traffic exchange and auto-surf programs

What combination of the above would offer the holy grail of inbound links to this post? Why no mention of PR or Alexa? What if the page only has 2 links pointing to it? Why don’t I get to the point?

b, a, c, a is the best damn link of the bunch. It’s the link I want.

Period.