Let us look at the typical way you would do link analysis on a website that already ranks well. You would use link analyzing software to determine which web sites link to a specific website. You can then list your web site in the same niche directories as your competitor and ask for reciprocal links from the websites that already link to your competitor.

Secondly you need to create valuable and unique content on your website. People usually tend to automatically link to websites that focus on valuable content.

Thirdly you need to focus on article marketing. By writing a professional article and submitting it to a major article directory I can gain traffic from the article directory and also from the search engine rankings that the article will get. The articles are viral in nature as many other publishers will reprint the articles and will gain additional links boosting my link popularity.