Ever since the onset of SEO, the factors that search engines use to determine which site to rank over another keep changing. Techniques have come and gone, but one thing remains constant: links are still as valuable and relevant as they have ever been.
In fact, I will make bold to say that link building is the most important factor in determining which website to rank over another. Now, Google won’t exactly say link building is the “most important” factor, but they’ve gone on record to tell us that it is one of the most important three[1].
The problem with link building is that, in an attempt to combat spam and abuse of their search results, search engines constantly evolve what kind of links they pay attention to. So a link building technique that worked in 2015 might no longer work in 2018.
Below are six link building techniques that are still working in 2018 and that will be just as effective in the foreseeable future:
Technique #1: content repurposing and distribution
An evergreen method of building links that works in 2018 and that will be effective for the foreseeable future is repurposing your content. A single piece of content can be repurposed into a dozen or more different pieces of content.
For example, a blog post can be turned into a slide presentation, a video, a podcast, a social image, an infographic, etc. The different pieces of content created from the original blog post are then distributed to different channels (such as infographic directories, slide sharing sites, video sites, social networks, etc) and all with links pointing back to the original content piece.
Technique #2: broken link building
Broken links are bad