The best strategy to reverse engineer your competitors websites

What a shame that some would suggest to NEVER reverse engineer...a total B.S.
In fact the biggest B.S. ever told regarding SEO. The blueprint to any success is duplicating what a successful individual has done.
Have you not heard "Imitation is the best form of flattery"? I don't know how Brits do their SEO, but be rest assured, reverse engineering and acquiring as many as the quality backlinks your competition has, and tagging that along with your own link building is what's called - Backlink Strategy on STEROIDS. It is a bird's-eye-view into the site that Google respects.

to use bogus examples as the one mentioned above, where he says "I have 200 sites of my own, so blah blah...." is just rubbish. He won't tell you that his 200 sites are not authority sites (brute honesty) and thus it's not the reason why he is ranking for whatever keyword he is targeting, chances are he is working his butt off to be on authority sites, and you can rest assure he doesn't own those. You will need more than "200" links to even be in the discussion these days.

So for the same guy that has tried to pull a bluff and discourage you, for trying what has worked for countless webmasters, i suggest you grill him more about "what makes him an authority to go against the tide and suggest, you should not waste your time. When, in fact, that's exactly where your focus should lie?"

I can promise you, he doesn't have a single key word ranking of any sort, and if he does, then it will take him YEARSSSSS, what would take folks like me few months to do massively well for real competitive KWs.

Don't buy it.

With that said, the most important part of your reverse-engineering should be focused on which links could you benefit the most from and which you should do your best to avoid (in terms of your competitor's link). That's what you should master. I am sure there are numerous ppl here on the forum who has touched on it, and pick your own and get to it.

In fact, how about you just go view SEO Spyglass and their free videos. Now you should listen to those sort of ppl, not a wanna-be that spouts and claim i own "200 sites". Who cares? It only takes money to do so Now, if he was a bit open-minded, he would have realized that it doesn't take 200 sites to be an IM, and certainly that's the most telling part of his comment. 200 sites = "I don't know what the heck i'm doing and i'm stuck on an old advice and now i must tell others what hasn't worked for me" . )))) Not sure it's a club you want to belong in Pal. All the best.