I know this question is soooooo subjective but i just wanted to get a general idea of how many backlinks you aim to achieve in given time period. For example, would the following structure be too much or too less or just simply wrong? Links achieved per month: 4 good content article submissions 20 blog comments 20 directory submissions 10 alternative links (e.g. yahoo answers, niche site backlinks etc.) As i am working on multiple sites, i am trying to guage a good level of backlink work per site to make sure i don't take on too much in one hit. I would rather do a good SEO job on 5 sites than a bad SEO job on 20 sites.
Very good places to get links you may also want to consider social bookmarking. Now that many a month is way to few I would recommend doing that many daily. Keep daily link building below a couple hundred to be on the safe side.
While that may seem like a lot I would also suggest you ramp it up particularly if you are in a competitve market. A good way to unscientifically determine how many links you should be getting is see what the top 5 in your particular keywords that you want to rank in have in terms of backlinks. While nowhere near exact it may give you a point of reference.
Also, check where your competitors have links, it can be a good indication of why they are in the position they are in. Then just try and copy them
Building links is essential, that is for certain. How many links is as many as you can obtain from relevant, high pr ranked sites- at least the pr of your site and above although every back link is better than no backlink. The more high pr backlinks you have the less you need but that gets you off track. Get backlinks and watch the sites in front of you or at least the top 5-10 in your niche for your keywords. Be clear though that they are looking behind them, some of them may be on this forum. Once you get on their radar they will likely do whatever they can to stay ahead of you so it is a case of cat and mouse to some degree. Like the guys who are running away from a bear, you need to outrun the bear but really you only need to outrun the other guy! Keep your nose to the grindstone- good luck!
It does depend on the industry and the keyword to plan numbers. I keep looking at competitive words across different industries and the top sites will usually average around 20k. This takes some work...is time on your side?
u have a good mix but work on getting more contextual backlinks that help most. publish articles on social media sites and free web 2.0 sites with your link embeded on the article which will help a lot
Thankyou for your answers, they're all very helpful. The main problem i have is trying to figure out how many websites i can manage successfully. If i dedicated all my time to one website then yes, i could dramatically increase the amount of time and links i could get. However i currently have 6 websites to perform SEO with others on their way. I just wondered, for those of you that are doing SEO on multiple website, roughly how do you split your time over them all. I read on a blog yesterday that you should spend 6 hours a day on SEO for a website. If i did this, i would currently need 36 hours per day with no time for luxuries like eating and sleeping....not gonna happen.