How often are there enough backlinks

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm slowly finding backlinks for our niche site.

90% of the competition is using internal pages so mining competitors is hard.

I'm mining sites that are in the backlinks of my competitors.

Question:

In cases like this, what percentage of the time do you think that it is possible to find enough backlinks to rank in the top 3?

For example, is there always enough backlinks to rank high enough? Is there only enough half the time? I know this is a general question but maybe you could try the answer it followed by a statement of "why I gave this answer"

Thanks!

[Ecreativeworks]

I'd say less than 1% of the time, if ever.

When you're looking through the backlinks of your competitors, you are never going to be able to get all of those links that they have. In fact, the acquisition rate is often pretty low (but still worthwhile, certainly). Some of the sites will be shut down, some will have linked specifically to them for a good reason and aren't going to link to you just because you ask. So at best you'll have some percentage of what you see they have.

But of course a bigger issue is that you are likely only seeing a small portion of their backlinks, so they're also benefiting from a bunch of links that you can't even see.

Mining the competition's backlinks is a good tool in the prospecting toolbox, but you're also going to have to find a lot of links of your own as well in most cases, to have a shot of ranking up near where the competition ranks.

[josh-riley]

And, keep in mind - if you use a tool to find out (about) how many backlinks your competition - or, the the top 3 sites for whatever keywords you are targeting - has, you just need more than that. Even better if you can get .gov/.edu links to help give you heft.

[BobGW]

Mining the competition's backlinks is a good tool in the prospecting toolbox, but you're also going to have to find a lot of links of your own as well in most cases, to have a shot of ranking up near where the competition ranks.<<

If you don't mind, could you list the ways to find backlinks besides

1. mining competitor's backlinks

2. mining competitor's backlinks' backlinks

We have time to slowly write content but not to guest post.

Thanks!

[KeriMorgret]

One idea off the top of my head is to look for mentions of your brand or URL where there are not links, and ask them to link. I'd also read through the link building posts from SEOmoz at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 and get some ideas from there.