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Hi, I have been doing SEO on my business website for about 4 years now. And it ranks #1-3 for my desired keywords and i always try to add new backlinks and keep uploading new content to a blog on the site as this is where nearly 100% of our customers come from so its important to me to rank high for the keywords related to my industry. However the last few months a competitor has taken over me for a certain keyword, i have researched their backlinks and site and from what i can see they have less content, and less backlinks, onpage seo isnt that great, and alot of the backlinks arent even related where all mine are in the same industry and i always research my backlinks to make sure that site has good backlinks also (i currently have about 48 root domain and 12,000 page backlinks for various pages of my website). The only thing they have over me is domain age, their domain is about 10 years old. I am also trying to target another hard to get keyword that im currently on Page 3 for, im sure over time i will rise to the top and its something i have to keep working at however i feel i wont get to where i want to be because im running out of ideas on where to get backlinks. After 4 years of building backlinks i feel like i have hit a brick wall, i started out by directory submission, then just links from other related sites, then i did a few article submissions and then i started finding it hard to get links so i started buying related links, however i seem to just keep buying and buying because im running out of ideas and it feels easier just to buy them, the only problem is its getting expensive and im now probably spending $80/month on paid backlinks! Although considering im not paying an SEO company its still a lot cheaper! I have gotten to the point where im researching sites that arent even in my industry (however still automotive related) and getting links on sites their on which was going really well,  but now even that feels like its coming to an end and im back to submitting to directories their on. So other then directories, paid links, articles etc. what else could i be doing to build quality backlinks? I stopped doing articles because they were so time consuming and i felt like i was only getting backlinks from them that were worthless and held no authority. I have about 4 blogs (all on different IPs) would it be worth blogging on them and building content and dropping links from those to mine or is it not worth the effort when i could just submit articles to article websites?