You need quality content, back link and good user experience. Get high quality back links from relevant niche and keep posting fresh content to your website. Share your posts in Social network sites.
Google analytics is basically used for website traffic analysis purpose, such as how many visits, how from which region, what are the sources etc. however webmaster tool is used for sitemap submission, crawl errors, sitemap errors, geo targeting etc.
Sharing your website in social network sites, Discussions in forums, commenting on blogs, posting articles on article directories, classified ad posting, local directory submission all can be used to increase traffic.
Panda and penguin are two most popular Google updates to penalize websites which don't follow webmaster guidelines. Panda hits poor quality sites with duplicate contents
It is a long topic you need to start from on page SEO optimizing Titles, headings, content, images etc. After that you can build quality back links pointing to your website.
There is no limit but it is better to focus on quality links so don't go for the quantity just go for the quality. Don't use any tool to build links in bulk instead just create useful and engaging contents so people will link back to you.
Web design is a long process so you need to learn html first then you need to learn programming language such as php but today tools like wordpress, joomla, wix etc. have made the job easy for web designers by offering drag and drop facility.
Social bookmarking is process of saving your links in social websites. It is off page activity and good for SEO. Google bookmark, diigo, getpocket are some examples of social bookmarking websites.
Responsive technology is the most popular web design trend nowadays even Google recommends it. If your website is not responsive then can miss a lot of sales. A responsive website can fit itself according to any layout.