Personally I have found quality links quite hard to gain, but I get lots of offers for me to pay for them, maybe I need to keep trying!

It is key to have quality content, but I think everyone should understand, that it is a combination of many SEO methods that will put you ahead.

Thanks for the insight. While I also believe in creating value and developing quality content I have to disagree. Competitive intelligence IS a viable link building strategy. By looking at the link profiles of your competition you can identify quality link sources you’re probably missing out.

This is not just about copying the other guys work. By looking at what the competitors are doing you also learn what they are NOT doing and if you analyze it you can come up with something creative and get the links no one yet has. The thing is you shouldn’t focus just on 1 competing site but take a larger group of say 10-12 competitors and analyze their links. Adopt the best working techniques improve on them, tweak them for your business and you’ll be riding on top of the wave.

Yes it’s not an easy job to do and getting the link list is just the first step, but in that you’re echoing the ideas in the article. The software recommended here helps you get all that data fast and easy.

You say: “Will a link partner be willing to link to your website (with maybe less age, rank and PR) than the competitor’s site?”

I say it’s not just about link exchange, there are plenty of other opportunities: is your competitor guest posting on some authority blog? Maybe you can make a post there too. Is there a review site where you can feature your product? Go for it.

“Lots of the links will be on ‘no follow’ pages that once were ‘do follow’ but have now changed. (a real ‘killer’ this one, especially if you don’t know how to indentify ‘no follow’ pages on Blogs and Forums etc”

Well if you don’t know how to tell a dofollow link from a nofollow one go learn it or use SEO SpyGlass or any other SEO tool you like to show you which links are dofollow. Besides, nofollow links from traffic-heavy sites can bring a lot of targeted visitors to your site and are often even more useful than nofollowed ones.

Bottomline:

Yes it’s not easy, but no one said it would be. Yes you need to learn things and do things. But if you just sit there and whine about how hard it is you’ll never get anywhere.

Here is the reality.

You spend hours, and I mean many hours, hard labour trying to identify the competitor links who ranks highest [or higher than you anyway] and then the fun begins.
You now have to find out HOW the links were placed…were they reciprocal, were they via do follow comments or forum postings, were they via article submissions, and so on and so on.

This again takes AGES to sift through, because EACH LINK has to be investigated individually.
Lets assume you use Yahoo site explorer…you follow the linked page, then have to see how the competitors link is placed; in what context? Was it paid for? Is it a comment on a blog? Is it a reciprocal link? And so on.
If the link is a comment on a blog, this is fairly straight forward (but beware the issue in paragraph below) If it’s a reciprocal link, you have to begin the process of contacting the websmaster, and then hoping your website will be accepted. If it’s a paid link, same thing.

But the most ridiculous aspect of all this is that you simply are not comparing like with like, apples with apples. Your website isn’t the same as your competitor (or at least it shouldn’t be!) your content will be different…how old is your site compared to your competitors? Will a link partner be willing to link to your website (with maybe less age, rank and PR) than the competitor’s site? Lots of the links will be on ‘no follow’ pages that once were ‘do follow’ but have now changed. (a real ‘killer’ this one, especially if you don’t know how to indentify ‘no follow’ pages on Blogs and Forums etc)

Any really valuable back links, one way back links in particular, which are THE most sought after, will likely be paid for links and you will need to set aside a sizable budget if you want to mimic these links. And that pre-supposes that the link site is still willing to accommodate more links of the same ilk.

The fact is, you should be looking to make your website as rich in excellent content as you possibly can, making every effort to ensure on-page optimization is carried out to the absolute maximum, covering every single aspect of this discipline. Then, and only then, should you start looking to build YOUR OWN back links.
There is NO QUICK FIX, no ‘SECRETS’….the methodology is already well established. There is a huge industry out there preying on people’s tendencies to believe that there is a magic way to garner hundreds of back links.

This tendency is an ingrained trait of human nature, and when one considers just how much CAN be automated using software nowadays it becomes a potent attractor.

But don’t be seduced.

Create YOUR OWN rich content.
Identify and gather YOUR OWN back link strategy.

Copy cat tactics wont work, will take too long to complete, and you’ll only end up becoming increasingly frustrated and disenchanted.

Be a leader, not a follower.