There are a large number of effective tactics available, but really you have to pick and choose them based on the niche/budget/funnel position/search intent/search features of a particular query/ect.
Some common example tactics include:
Broken Backlink Building:
Create high quality page, then look for pages that have historically served the same searcher intent and attracted backlinks but are now no longer available and reach out to sites that linked to that and offer them the newer resource to fix their broken link.
Skyscraper technique:
Make a list of similar pages that serve same search intent as a term or topic you are going after, sorted by relevance and links earned. Make a significantly better page, then reach out to webmasters linking to the other resource and suggest your better/more-up-to-date/relevant to readers link as an alternative.
Social Proof Pitch:
Before promoting your content to Journo's and Bloggers, try to get it to the top of a subreddit or the reddit homepage or otherwise demonstrate its popularity on other social networks. Then when you pitch it you can point to it likely being a useful resource. Also works if the thing you got to do well socially is a stub of a story and you offer to write in-depth about it or about an important part of a larger story as a guest post.
Citable elements:
Make otherwise hard-to-link-to pages like landing pages easier to link to by adding relevant citable elements (charts, graphs, facts & figures) that bloggers and journo's may wish to reference.
Unlinked Brand Mentions:
Set up alerts for any time your brand is mentioned. If you see one that isn't a link but a link would be relevant in the context of the article, ask the author to make the mention a link.
HARO / SourceBottle / Reporter Connection:
Make yourself available as a subject matter expert to reporters, and when giving expert quotes, reference deeper explanations in articles already present on your site.
Reverse Guest Post:
Pay or entice industry authority/influencer to write something on your site to attract additional eyeballs to your other content.
Topical Interviews / Industry Round-ups / Guest Speaking ( podcasts, video, conferences):
Go places where relevant audiences already exist and get them interested in hearing more from you.
Get Friendly with Pirates:
Use copyscape or reverse image search to find people who are using your content or images without proper attribution. Instead of sending take-down requests, ask that they credit, with a link the source and or do a cross domain rel canonical to the original content.
And so on, and so forth. Good Search marketers have a wide variety of tactics at their disposal. Great search marketers will only apply the relevant ones rather than trying to offer clients one-size-fits all strategies.
Edit: A lot of these are much easier with the help of some tools like ahrefs, semrush, pitchbox/buzzstream, hunter.io and the like.
Brian Dean as far as I know didn't invent anything I listed above, with the exception I think of coming up with a name for the skyscraper technique. He has however done a great job over the years of collecting various tactics, strategies and research methods and publishing them in a nice digestible format.
I've been in the space since 2009 and most of what I know I learned via trial and error, just setting up test sites to see what works (see my linked video from 2011 for more on that). That said there is a really nice community in the SEO space with people eager to share whats worked for them or put their own spin on widely adopted tactics and strategies.
Off the top of my head I'd recommend Ahrefs (both their blog as well as their YouTube channel), Backlinko (that'd be Brian Dean), SEO by the Sea (mostly digging into google patents and trying to understand their implications for search), Moz, anything by Nick Eubanks, Cyrus Shepard, ViperChill, Ross Hudgens, Garret French or Jon Cooper.
One thing to keep in mind is a lot of stuff goes out of fashion pretty quickly. If you are reading a post about SEO from a few years ago, double check to make sure its still in line with best practices and effective. If it seems like a short-term tactic it's probably best avoided regardless. And above all else, don't assume because some SEO Guru said a thing is a thing that it is indeed a thing. Test everything. Google doesn't give a manual for how to rank and they make changes to the algorithm regularly, so everyone is making educated guesses. There are many schools of thought inside the SEO industry. When in doubt, test it out.
Thank you for the insights! One last question if you don't mind..
Have you ever paid for buying links? I know it is against Google's policy but SEO companies I talked to before I decided to learn it myself told me that 18 out of 100 links are paid links (with maybe 2 free links as every SEO guy is doing broken lb, etc so free links are mostly taken). They said they can even get me links from some pretty big sites if I had the budget for it.
