Is there a better way to build backlinks and exposure?

I am a long-time writer (financial and technical) and have become proficient at finding and ranking for long-tail keywords, but the other half of SEO, link building, seems completely broken to me.

The most common strategies that I see are manually introducing people to your content (e.g., email outreach or HARO), finding broken links and purpose-building content, or guest posting on other people's blogs.

I love the idea of guest posting (sharing expertise), but the strategy seems to have broken down in recent years. Many publishers are unwilling to accept guest posts anymore due to the massive amount of spam offers (I get them daily). At the same time, search engines are better at recognizing poorly written articles stuffed with irrelevant links (thankfully).

I am hoping there's a better way.

I built TrustyLinks as a guest posting platform for product blogs. Rather than pitching publishers or finding broken links, why not write about what we know and publish those insights on another company's blog that's in a related niche? It's a win-win: The writer gets product exposure and backlinks and the publisher gets a relevant, high-quality article that generates search traffic over time.

I would love to hear any thoughts?