Building links with an eye fixed on your competitor’s linking strategy will enhance your approach towards link building. You need not necessarily learn from your own mistake, you can learn from your competitor’s mistake too. Most importantly, you will be exposed to new ideas and procedures of link building by keeping a tight scrutiny on your competitor’s linking activities.

Analyzing linking building strategy of your competitors will involve the following steps

1. Link analysis tools: Link analysis tools helps in procuring detailed information on linking activities of a given URL. Free tools for conducting link analysis could be availed here

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/).

http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyzer/

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

http://yoast.com/seo-tools/link-analysis/ (add on for Yahoo site explore)

1. Identifying competition: Identify your competition by entering your keywords in search engines like Google and Yahoo. The top five results in the SERP will give you the toughest competition.
2. Tracing potential link source: A thorough analysis of your competitor’s inbound links will give you a lead to potential link source. The potential link source can be converted into major link contributor.
3. Monitoring Social Media activities: Monitor the amount of involvement your competitor is having in the social media such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati. Compare it with the leverage he is getting in return. If the advantages exceed effort, you can adopt a similar strategy.
4. Analyzing the link bait: Analyze if your competitor uses link bait to win links. Research on the competitor’s link bait could be a great source of inspiration for innovative ideas on link bait.

The regular link building strategy through article syndication, RSS feeds, blogs, social bookmarking etc might sound clichéd but are tremendously effective in earning links, along with your “who is linking to my competitors” watch.