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I don’t see any problem with SEO competition in general but i guess there are few things that should also be considered as important: Only white-hat tactics will be used to build links and content to the website No low quality link building should be done Content should be unique and original and should create to enhance user experience and not search engine experience. I also feel that instead of measuring 1^st page ranking as an indicator, the success of the project should be based on number of leads a project generates at the end of the project. Hope this helps! I think with the ideas given above.. i don't see any point where this competition go black hat!

Look at the percentages on sites ranking well in your niche. Also look at some big brands like Gnc and note the natural breakdown of their anchors between keyword anchors, brand anchors, urls anchors, brand + keyword anchors, click here anchors, etc. It's not an exact science  but should help you get a better grasp of what Google is looking for with a "natural" backlink profile. Good luck!