but I'm not sure which approach is best for novices
it's not about what's best for you, it's about what's best for your site, so you need to struggle / git gud from the get-go if it helps your site
If your site has never acquired / had backlinks before, it's best to keep it slow, steady, and quality only.
Slow means only build a handful of links per week / month instead of blasting your site with 100s of them, even if this strategy sometimes does work.
Steady means building links constantly over time (over months / years) instead of building them all in 1 week and then stopping. If you do this, you risk getting your site penalized as google are looking for unnatural patterns, and sites that acquire 100s of links once and then stop is anything but natural, because legit sites always get links consistently over years as their rankings and traffic grow. So, you should try to build links to the pages that either rank, or get traffic, or both, in order to appear as natural as possible (exception being if you're building links to the homepage of your site, which you should be doing heavily in the beginning anyway, but using branded links mostly...)
And with regards to quality it means getting links from sources that google trusts / likes (which is another topic in itself), but it's usually a matter of getting links from pages that have organic traffic, this is the best indicator of quality nowadays...
But even so, it almost always depends on your site and your goals like I said, some sites and keywords need PBN links more than others, other cases could employ brand mentions or niche edits, etc... But I think it's safe to say that regardless of your site and goals, most of the time you can't go wrong with guest posts (not guest pieces
), foundation / profile links, and quality .edu / .gov links (by quality links in the context of edu / gov I mean NOT redirects, but links inside of actual pieces of content, such as school blog posts or governmental announcements, etc... but these are expensive and hard to get usually so they might not be an easy option, but they are there at the top of quality links...) ... Or, if you're doing local SEO directory links and NAPs (citations) also work...
Anyway, if you wish to learn more about link building this short guide is worth a read:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guide-how-many-links-per-day-week-or-month-should-i-build.1502403/
HTH
