Read and follow the webmaster guidelines published by the search engines is about the safest recommendation you can get today.
Well, the worst way to get links are on sites where tons of low quality links are being added. There are forums that get spammed, blogs that get spammed and directories that get spammed. Spend your time in quality places, and you can expect higher quality results. The better links are not as easily obtained.
Here is a link from which you can read the webmaster guidelines..I think if you google this instead of query about it then you will also able to get this link: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Have you tried social media sites so far? Its one good way to increase the value of your website, make sure to increase your fan page too. In that case you can increase your loyal customers and search engines would love your site.