First you need to target long tail KWs, and Easy KWs. Pick things which will make you appear as an authority in your niche, hence the use for Long tails.
Long tails should rank on their own, and will force your reader to read more and share your site.
The most important part of an Authority site is the KW research.
For link building, I always do:
1. Press Release - Get your brand out their and establish trust and authority.
2. Social - Build a quick traffic base and establish authority.
3. Manual trust links - I consider these things like audio links, profile links, ect. High trust and authority links.
4. Manual outreach Guest Posts - Have the links point to category pages or the easy comp KWs you have.
5. Add more longtails.
After some time (Six months out) you should have some natural links already. I keep an eye on velocity with the links I build and will add parasites, good 2.0s and some balancing lower quality links such as comments, social platform 2.0s, bookmarks, profiles, a couple signature links, ect. The point of this is to look natural.
Six months of at least weekly longtail KW article posting should establish some authority and trust, so you can move onto easy comp KWs and they should rank, well, easily.
The point is to set up a site that ranks without links when building an authority site. Keep at it and it will work out.