Amount of Links or Amount of links pro -rata?

Something which I have just thought about is how unfair the inbound linking system must be when it comes to size of sites..

Lets say you have 2 sites..

'Sainsbury's' and a small online delivery service called 'The local market' .

If Sainsbury's is a bigger known name which gets more hits to the site, it is bound to get more links per targeted keyphrase, so does a small site compete with that?... It could also be the same for 2 smaller sites. One site only getting more 'hits' (thus links) becuase it has an adword campaign.

Or.. does google not work a system where inbound link strength is measured against by the organic hits to the site?..

Its more a question of focus really and concentrated relevance. For example I dominate the SERPs in my market over a very wide range of search terms. But some spefic search terms that i compete for I am beaten by some of my competators. They have nothing like my LJ but they are targetting just one search phrase where i target hundreds. With concentrated anchor texts they beat me for some specific searches as my target is so broad. The same could be true of your example. A small focused player can beat the big players for specific terms if the big players are only targetting those terms in a general sense and do not have many specific anchor texts that conatin those specific terms....

I think what you're asking is can a small business compete with a multinational company on a fair playing field and win.

The answer is probably yes if you keep building up back links. Big companies have a tendancy to be complacent as they think they should win by default and therefore don't really try.

For example, if I was to search google for "organic vegetables" something that would be key to a "local market" site and sainsburys don't appear anywhere within the top 20.

If you were to search for "fresh meat" it's exactly the same.

If you were to search for "supermarket" - They just scrape the top ten and that is exactly what they are...

Just work out your niche, do your keyword research and optimise your pages both on page and off as best you can

relevancy is the key and dominating of certain keyword or phrase and also consider the power if links which gives support to your site to rank better.
You can bit them by doing that method. Link to related site optimize your site pages with good content using your target keywords then do build links on that pages.

I actually think that big companies have a competitive advantage because they get natural backlinks. They do a lot of PR, they appear in the press constantly... which drives a lot of backlinks. It´s quite difficult to compete against that.

It's not though, because the majority of PR and press might be back links, but they won't be back links from keywords...just company names...or the url itself

So they will get a lot of traffic just cos of their brand position, but unless someone searches google for Sainsburys for example....as far as I'm concerned....the field is wide open