Note : the pic i attached is to (off-page) seo the book here http://www.simplyclicks.com/SEM-Over-Site.pdf
Try to post your website in all classified websites, message boards, yahoo groups, google groups.. etc..
Show me a site near the top of the SERPS for a competitive term, that used reciprocal links to get there. You need 1-way links to compete. And 9 times out of 10 you have to pay to get them. That's business, and Google can whinge and bleat about it as much as they like, but that's the monster they've created, and there's nothing they can do about it.
This worked for me very well.. Start a buzz. I mean start something people will be talking about. Mine was some sort of contest. I then emailed some bloggers about it asking if they would share it with people they know. I didn't ask them directly to write a post about it, but they did that. And I got free links. People started coming to my site asking questions and stuff.
The most important step in SEO is to spend more time/effort/money on content than SEO If you provide value, backlinks will come.
Links. So my most important seo step is to create content that visitors will share on their blogs, in forums, myspace, bookmarking sites, chat rooms. Nobody talks about or links to every good, informative or quality site they visit each day. They just link to the ones that pushed a button (cool, crazy, unique, way above avg).