brother, as you are saying is not easy, its right becasue search engines have been smart now. They can easily detects our any spammy move in start.
I understand your point, i can try this, i would like to experience your experience. I know its hard to rank without backlinks but i want to do this experience.
i undertsand your points, that long tail keywords are important but normally the high tarffic is got by short tails keywords, it means we can ignore short tail keywords.
with a new website i would be more concerned with being useful rather than obttaining backlinks right from the start. i would choose topics that are not highly competitive nd then cover them well contribute my own take on them nd make sure to create an effective internal linking structure.
I have found it easier to developed topic clusters rather than chase links right away. once you were convinced that ur website is providing enough content in that niche some terms can moves pretty quickly.
New site so Concentrate on search intent and topic coverage first. create pages which would out performs the existing ranking pages in answering the query. Once that is dn relies on internal linking for a while.
Authority through topical expertises and highly focused low volatility key words is the path to take. Create 30 to 50 highly correlated cluster blog posts within a micro niche before tackling any competitive keyword research.
Look for zero volume searches in reddit and quora and give an absolute hit answer in those topics using a brand new domain. When people visit ur site and stick to it rather than returning to serp google will index you based only on that user engagement.
For a new site without backlinks, I would put most of the focus on topical authority, search intent, strong content depth, internal linking, and a clean technical setup. You can build a decent foundation organically with these before even thinking about link building. From there, links can be added later if needed for more competitive terms.
I have seen new websites gain popularity without any back links by targeting niche searches first. You can develop ur own website around topic clusters and then use the better pages to elevate the others.
imo for a fresh website I would first concentrate on the search intent, topical relevance and gd internal linking. If the content fulfills the query you will get some wins before worrying about the backlinks.