Link building is a primary component of SEO.

In fact the majority of SEO activity is largely to generate links.  A link is like a vote and the more links that you have coming in to your web site is like having a lot of votes.  So the more votes you have the more likely you are to appear higher in the search engines as your competitors.

But unlike an election campaign all votes are certainly not equal.  A vote from a site that is already deemed as an authority site on the internet is a lot more beneficial that getting a link from a directory that has say ten thousand links on the same page where your link is.

So how do you get authority links coming in to your web site?  The answer, unfortunately, is not easily.  But an effective SEO strategy will involve a reasonable amount of reverse engineering of your competitors.  This analysis will indicate the following:

• how many links you need to achieve your objective
• the quality of those links – quality meaning how much value do they have
• the age of those links – have they been there for years
• The number of pages you may require
• The social media activity you need to undertake
• And  other key SEO parameters

Armed with this information you can define and execute an SEO strategy that will start to position you on the same level as your competition.  The only thing you need to consider is that they have been there for a long time and you will be the ‘new kid-on-the-block’. So they may already have more authority than you and you will need to increase your efforts to overcome them.