Link building can be such time consuming activity sometimes the value isn’t readily apparent. When analyzing competitors who have thousands of links it may seem like an impossible task. That’s why it’s important to focus on keywords that are highly targeted with lower competition if you want to drive traffic that converts.
The opportunity to uncover keyword phrases that have low competition is still incredibly high. You can search Wordtracker in almost any industry and find good phrases that would be easy to rank in the top 10 and even in the first place position with a moderate amount of optimization work.