I remember that Simpsons episode when Homer creates a website, which contained nothing controversial, and full of bells and whistles, yet thin on content. Then he wrote an article about something controversial, and his visitor numbers went through the roof.

This is content marketing 101. Discover something new, tell people about it, profit. The backlinks will happen naturally and organically. You may even have your article featured in some high profile website that gets 10,000x more traffic than your site, boosting your SEO in the process.