When focusing on SEO for your website, it's important to know that search engine optimization is a game of relativity. What I mean is that SEO can be accomplished by focusing on your on-page optimization factors and off-page optimization factors relative to your competition.

Your on-page optimization factors include meta tags, keyword density and so on. One of your most important off-page optimization factors is link development. In-bound links to your website are important to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and can dramatically improve your search engine result placements. The ultimate question you need to ask yourself is where you should be getting your links from?

One of the best methods I've found for determining which sites to be targeting for link building campaigns is to research your competition on Alexa. As one of the Internet's most popular sites for determining website popularity and traffic ranking, Alexa works off of a toolbar users download to their computer. This toolbar provides a significant amount of information about websites collected for and accessible via Alexa.com.

To determine which sites to target for your campaign, simply Alexa.com and type in the name of your competitor. When you located your competitors site, select the "linking in" link. Each of the sites in the result list link to your competitor. By acquiring links from the same sites (plus a couple of extra), your website can "outrank" your competitor's site on major search engines.

Consider the "Alexa" strategy before starting your link building campaign. It can help you streamline your efforts and achieve the results you're looking for.