Link Profile Copying Isn’t The End All Be All

Many search engine optimizers make a strong recommendation to back engineer your competitor’s web sites and figure out where they are getting their links. Inbound links currently account for a very high percentage of the ranking algorithms. So, the theory is that if your competitor is ranking on page one of Google and you can copy their link profile, you too will rank on page one. Julie Joyce wrote a something about this in Search Engine Land that I happen to agree with. You can see the original article here. My comment on the subject is:

I’ve often thought this was an over hyped method. It is certainly one that should be researched but it’s just one method of many. At best, if you could duplicate every competitor link, you just leveled the inbound link field. That doesn’t mean you’ll be next to them in ranking though. SEO is a chess came that requires the best SEO to think both inside and outside the box. It’s the little things, plus going the extra mile for a client, that make a huge difference.