Link building is hard, but it's not the only way to make traffic gains in Google's search results.
When I first started SEO, building links wasn't my strong suit. Writing outreach emails terrified me, and I had little experience creating killer content. Instead, I focused on the easy wins.
While off-page factors like links typically weigh more heavily than on-page efforts in Google's search results, SEOs today have a number of levers to pull in order to gain increased search traffic without ever building a link.
For experienced SEOs, many of these are established practices, but even the most optimized sites can improve in at least one or more of these areas.