would be a long process for most... unless you had some killer tools to help. We have tools that tell us, among other things, the "odds" of getting links based on article topics, so we know what to write, how to write it, and who to write to. ....I was looking at the links we got that came in over the weekend, and one was from a nasa.gov page...pr4 btw. And that particular article will also attract probably get several links from edu's, org's, k12's, and other trusted sites. When you know what to write, how to write it, and who to write to....and you are able to make it worth your time, it's a wonderful thing. this builds trust....but don't be mistaken, most of the time this isn't exact anchor text to exact pages of your site that most of you are targeting. If you're looking at short tail, and the top people are getting exact targeted phrases to exact targeted pages, they will beat you on the short tail... If you're getting trusted links likes edu's gov's org's k12's etc you'll find the overall health of your site to improve. The trick then is to have lots of unique content (to advantage of all the long tail phrases), and to correctly interlink your pages to get the most trust and power to your best pages that will deliver the most ROI.