Many SEO companies are nothing more than link building companies. While there’s nothing wrong with that, these link builders typically only have one way to build links: they buy them. Yes, you’re not supposed to do it, but many big names in the industry do it, and are getting pretty covert about it. Of course, for every link broker, there are clients. Big-name companies are engaging in link buying on a massive scale.

Unless you’re a big company, with a big budget, link buying might not be feasible. Even if it is, it might not be a smart idea. Companies like J.C. Penny have the means to get back into the good graces of Google. You might not. You need SEO tactics that can crush your competition without going blackhat.

Take Advantage Of Your Lazy Competition.

Let’s face it: most of your competitors are lazy. Even the big boys. They’d rather throw money at the problem and try to solve their ranking problems that way. Take advantage of this. There comes a point when many people give up on an idea they had for a website. They either get lazy or they lose motivation or something else happens.

However, chances are they created a lot of content and they actively worked to get backlinks. Old sites that are no longer kept up in good working order probably have a lot of broken links. This means that there are websites out there that are pointing to 404 pages. These 404 pages used to contain some good stuff. They don’t anymore – obviously.

This is a goldmine. Find these broken websites (i.e. geocities communities) and drop the 404 page into the way back machine. Find out what used to be on there. Find out who links to these now defunct pages. Contact those websites and tell them “hey, you’re linking to a dead page.” Create content that is at least as good as the dead content on that 404 page. Now you have some kind of valuable offer for these people who are linking to the 404 page.

These websites can continue linking out to a broken webpage, or they can link to you. Remember, you came to them with a value proposition. You’re not trying to scam a link from them. You actually have something they want – otherwise they wouldn’t have linked out to that old website in the first place. You can help their SEO and yours at the same time. They’ll probably even thank you for it.

Rinse. Repeat. Crush your competition.