Question about competitor strategy

Hello guys,
I'm just analyzing my competitor's backlinks and he has a huge number of them. What I see is that most of his backlinks are from blog comments on various niche websites like vingle, cascade, and more authority websites. He is into the subject, either not. Depends.
Is this a good strategy to follow or should I continue my strategy with buying guest posts on good authority websites (a few per month because I'm new, as people on bhw suggested me)?
I see he doesn't do at all guest posting or other link-building methods. I want to mention he is probably onto the top in this micro-niche, so that's why I'm following him.
In terms of website speed, content, social media, and structure I would consider myself better than him. He also has some spun content.

Thank you

Hi @misuh continue building relevant and quality backlinks to your site.
Be patience to get good result.

Continue with buying guest posts on good authority websites...

The ranking formula for ANY keyword is simple (have quality content and build quality backlinks), only the proportions change.

If you're already ranking for the keywords you want it means that you've gotten enough backlinks, and if you aren't ranking already it means that you need more backlinks. That's all there is to it, really

Now, the best types of backlinks nowadays are - as usual - the ones that are hard and/or expensive to get, and some of these are guest posts, quality PBNs, and niche edits.

And the reason for which your competitors outrank you with shitty backlinks in spite of your quality ones could be (just a guess) that they are having PBN backlinks that are hidden from crawlers (googlebot, ahrefs bot, etc). There might also be that he's just generally having more RDs than you, but my bet is on the hidden PBNs. Many webmasters ranking 1st for medium to high competition keywords use their own PBN nowadays and if they're doing a good job at masking their PBN you will never see a single PBN backlink showing up in ahrefs and other SEO tools.

Countinue your things, you are going well and never focus on low quality links.

Thank you everyone for these gold answers!

tazarbm said:

The ranking formula for ANY keyword is simple (have quality content and build quality backlinks), only the proportions change.

If you're already ranking for the keywords you want it means that you've gotten enough backlinks, and if you aren't ranking already it means that you need more backlinks. That's all there is to it, really

Now, the best types of backlinks nowadays are - as usual - the ones that are hard and/or expensive to get, and some of these are guest posts, quality PBNs, and niche edits.

And the reason for which your competitors outrank you with shitty backlinks in spite of your quality ones could be (just a guess) that they are having PBN backlinks that are hidden from crawlers (googlebot, ahrefs bot, etc). There might also be that he's just generally having more RDs than you, but my bet is on the hidden PBNs. Many webmasters ranking 1st for medium to high competition keywords use their own PBN nowadays and if they're doing a good job at masking their PBN you will never see a single PBN backlink showing up in ahrefs and other SEO tools.

Click to expand...

Hello. Thank you for taking your time. Can you tell me where to buy / how to create these great PBNs? Its the first time im hearing of hidden PBNs. Im scared if this is true I would never outrank him.

Ranking Expert said:

Countinue your things, you are going well and never focus on low quality links.

Click to expand...

Thats what im doing, thanks for motivation sir!

You should continue your strategy and see whether it works or not.
maybe someone will follow you later.

misuh said:

Hello. Thank you for taking your time. Can you tell me where to buy / how to create these great PBNs? Its the first time im hearing of hidden PBNs. Im scared if this is true I would never outrank him.

Click to expand...

hidden PBN means websites that you own and which are hidden to crawlers via robots.txt or .htaccess file. PBN is seriously just websites that you own, but which are unique among themselves, leave as few footprints as possible for google to trace them back to you, and - probably the most important thing - they are hosted with different hosting companies in order to get unique IPs

So really, all you have to do is build your own network of websites, which you then link to the website/page you want to rank for, from. The advantage of having PBN over guest posts or other purchased backlinks is that you have total control over the number and quality of backlinks you're getting, but like I said, you need to make sure that your PBN leaves as few footprints as possible in order to be powerful. This mean different Wordpress theme and design, different login unsernames, different types of content and number of words for each wall of text, different IPs (one of the most important things about PBN), etc.

I'm not getting into details on this topic because you can find detailed explanations on the forum with a quick search. Just know that PBN means your own websites that you can point backlinks from to your money sites