Where to spend the time

Hi,

I've got a new website up and running, and it has some really good information on it.

I want to start getting some visitors to the website without using pay per click campaigns, I don't sell anything on the website so there'd be no way for me to make my money back.

I've already started writing new content for the website and have emailed a few other websites asking for a back link, but after doing this a few times a week I've really got no time to do anything else, like submit to search engines, or write a press release or anything like that...

In your opinion where should I be spending my limited time to get this website ranked higher in the search engines for my set of keywords? Can it sometimes take awhile for the effects of new content and back links to take affect?

Or is content way more important than backlinks and I should spend most of my time here...

I've just read so much in the way of search engine optimisation I don't seem to get a clear indication of what things I should be doing and in what order I should be doing them in... I try to optimise all my pages for 2-3 keywords, I write as best I can for the user, I ask for link backs but don't always get them..

maybe I'm just in a frustrated mood coz I can't seem myself in the search engines, I really like the website, but I'm getting no traffic from any search engine