Sometimes that may be true about the partnership, but I think most of the time it isn't the case. Just use a backlink checker to see where your competetors page is getting it's backlinks from. Go to those same sites and see if there is a place you can get a backlink from as well. Also once you see where their backlinks are coming from you can even search for better sites than they are using.
Just do a search for backlink checker to find good tools to help you out.
There are a few listed in this thread
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/159242-some-links-help-you-out.html
First of all, thank you for your interest to try to help. This is a very good quality in one person.
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In my competitor's case corpoperfeito com br , Using Spy Glass software (free edition) and using Yahoo search (I could not use Google Br because it is a free edition) I received this information from my competitor:
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1607 backlinks were found but your Free license allows you to see only 1100 of them.
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Using Samurai (when it was working... test edition) I could see much more sublinks to my competitor's website. I think they use Yahoo directory to see it, it is more complete than Google.
You can see image in Attachment.. with a litle number of links.
For what I could study.. the biggest part of the SUBLINKS they have comes from its AFFILIATES PROGRAM. They pay comission like Amazon and others companies for refer to its website. For this reason I can see a lot of sublinks to them. Most of them in Brazil websites (language portuguese)... but some of these websites are not very good.. are blogs and others that have no traffic, but has its link inside them.
When I talked about PARTNERSHIP... I'd like to say that in some cases.. the BEST DOMAINS you will not have a way to insert a link. Maybe because they are not foruns and you can not create a profile.. maybe because they will not have more space for the same kind of company.
Let's get an example:
Keywords: suplemento alimentar and suplementos alimentares
Let's use: LinkAssistant (from Spy Glass) to get better links to these 2 keywords.
IN ATTACHMENT ANOTHER IMAGE TO SHOW BEST PR RESULTS.
The biggest part of these domains are from big companies which has no ADs or links inside their websites. Some of them are from my own competitors.
So.. in this case: HOW TO GET "GOOD SUBLINKS"?
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In my case, I think I can start to get more and more sublinks here in Brazil using the same strategy from my biggest competitor: AFFILIATE PROGRAM... to pay by comission.
Another strategy can be: create a lot of blogs calling about something and refer our website with a link or image.
One doubt I have is: CAN I SUBMIT in the best web directories like Dmoz and others.. PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE articles or just in english?
Tks!