I’m actively doing a backlink competitor analysis rn, in fact I came here to research and stayed to procrastinate lol. But if your clients have well-established, technically-sound, domains with decent content and a moderate amount of backlinks I would not emphasize backlink work too much.

I’m still researching but many of the high DA domains I am seeing are major publications, social media, maybe a few truly authoritative domains in your niche, with a lot of mid-range DA ones from those blasted local and niche directories or blogs. For a localized business absolutely try and get on those Chamber of Commerce sites and other various directories, this potentially helps not only with your backlinks but also Local SEO citations. And definitely make sure you have GMB, Bing Places, Yelp, MapQuest, Apple Maps, etc and social media accounts if applicable. But other than the handful of opportunities you may find, you’re gonna run into a lot of pay-to-play shit either above board or below board, and it just doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe I’ll change my stance in a couple months, who knows.