How To Rank Any Keyword On Page 1 : White Hat Guide, Any Clue?

Hi mate,
Their is adage which state thus;" if i can see further than any other man, it means i stand on the shoulder of giants". Let me go straight, i'm new to internet maketing, though with some basic knowledge like keyword research, website building (wordpress stuffs) etc. As a result of this, i have a website in one niche right now for the past few months, but the only problem am having with it now is traffic, well due to some reasons, i decided to go for free traffic. Haven't gone through some of the past posts of this section of warrior forum, i discovered that in order to get free traffic to my website, i need to build backlinks with several methods like directory submission, forum posting, blog commenting, high profile links, social bookmarking etc. But, i got confused when read that some of these methods are working with little effective while others are out dated, also don't about the 1st tier, 2nd tier and so on. So, i want to asked that if i want to rank a keyword "Yacon Syrup review" for instance ( though am having up to 7 keywords to target but i want to go one after the other), on the first page 1 for the search term.
How would i go about it, am just looking for guide and not ready to go for paid stuff right now. Thanks in advance.