One of the most important ranking factors aside from link building is content word count. I use a toolbar called Serpworx (you might want to check them out) and one of the most important metric I've been going to recently is their word count metric. If the top 3 spots on the SERPS have over 1,500 words then we know we have to build a 2,000 word page. Next to DA or UR this is my goto metric.