Way to improve Referral Links

i want to know the Way to improve Referral Links, if you are posting unique content to some different directories it consider as a copied content (no use of that). how do i improve my Referral links,if i am writing unique article for blog,web.2.0, guest blog, its not possible to increase the back link like competitors (they are having more than lac back links). if back link is really spam then how my competitors are getting ranking and why not yet penalized by google.

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