How are sites obtaining thousands of back links and keywords in their first few months?

I see this a lot in our competitors that surpass us. With our outreach efforts we are only able to obtain 20-30 back links per month about about 100-300 new keywords per month. Already this is a stretch for our budget. I’m sure there are a few things that influence our competitors obtaining these at such high volume, but am I missing something? Please share your thoughts!