Digimad

Take a look at the certification material - http://www.magentocommerce.com/certification/developer
 
That will give you an idea of Magento and its complexities.

As with most complex content systems it can take a couple of days to get the basics and a lifetime to master

seo has become very time consuming, lots of websites use re-nofollow tags, so be sure not to wast your time on these sites. Article writing/distribution with links embedded and un-natural anchor links are now seen as advertising and google will reject them. Traditional seo methods can be found here, but I dont now if they are relevant today.

I would suggest looking at successful web design sites. Type in 'professional web design' or 'web designers' for example, select a few sites and see who is linking to them. There are a number of tools out there that may help.
 
Oh, and of course don't forget to join the directory and get yourself a nice PR4 backlink

Anything that is related to your business with a good quality link profile and high quality links pointing into them. There are millions of web design blogs out there that are willing to take guest posts.
 
Maybe even business websites and talk about running a business. Don't go with any blog comment ****e or link exchanges, they don't work. Guest posting will be the best route for you.

Personally I see a lot of PHP developers working with it and when you have issues due to your most basic of plugins/modules no longer working with your updated Drupal then you can be stuck.
 
It is always best to go with what you know best and then build your skills up in things if you are able too but when it comes to clients websites if it goes wrong and you have no idea on how to fix someone else's module/plugin then it won't look good.
 
Hope this helps Give us a shout if you have anything you need help with.

I use this method, directly related but non rival. So if your site for example is a property developer (building) then links with companies that sell furnishings is a good place to start. It also increases referral traffic.
 
One client gets around 90 quality referrals from a link with a performance parts supplier as my client offers performance modifications and a lot of people buying the parts don't really know how to fit them so the link is worth more than the traditional 'back link juice'. It also helps when contacting potential link partners as when you email them make a point of mentioning what they offer which you do not and they will see the benefit.

Guest blogging is really best, but it may take too long time. See if you can link exchange with some other websites.
 
There is a lot of information on the topic online. Check moz.com for example.

Guest blogging is the best way for getting quality back links . You just have to write a quailty content and than share in your niche .

There is a limited way of getting immediate backlinks that are quite good. That being searching for industry specific directories with a good page rank on their inner pages (not too many of those around). Maybe contact non competing but related websites and see if they will do a mutually beneficial link exchange (you will be unsuccessful in most cases).
 
Then really its down to creating something people will actually want to link to and promoting it through social media sites, such as Twitter or Facebook. You could also become a guest blogger if you could find a decent website that is looking for one in your industry.
 
Getting backlinks is really, really difficult and in most cases its not quick. Good luck and I hope you do well.

The right images can take a while to find, but speed up the time spent designing massively. If your design is image heavy, then picking the right imagery is equally as important as everything else IMO.

Save yourself the time and effort and get a stock photo. Web designers have enough to do as it is! lol Shutterstock has a really good selection you can probably get whatever you need on there and if you want this kind of effect in the link then just apply filters in photoshop.
 
Hope this helps

Drupal is good as long as you know what modules you want, unlike WordPress where you get a WYSIWYG editor and image uploading systems etc built-in you have to install a lot of modules from the community to get these things working and some times it can be a lot of pain for some if you want something that can quickly be enabled straight out of the box.
 
Recently our team found SilverStripe CMS (http://www.silverstripe.org/) and this is a very nice CMS to work with and code for.. Also they have most basic modules included in the core script and there are modules by the community that are both free or paid that you can install.
 
Hope this helps but I am sure a full time Drupal developer will be able to shed some more light on Drupal