SEO 101

An example: let's say you have a time tracking web app. Your content can talk about good approaches to time management, or techniques to focus, or publish research about the average lengths of different tasks from the data that you can gather from your users.

A great example is Mint.com's blog -- http://www.mint.com/blog/

I'm sorry but this is just SO wrong, and the first page SERP's are riddled with low quality examples of why this is not true. I see this regurgitated through-out the blogosphere :\

To answer your question, get backlinks, just get more backlinks. Remember, Google (et al) work off of a link graph, not a "how brilliant is your content" graph ;)

What people NEVER follow up with when regurgitating "just write good content and the rest will follow" is that it's purpose is to bait backlinks, the thought being the better the content, the more backlinks you'll get.

Even if you do take on paid for links and google doesn't realise I doubt you're going to make very much from it. I would suggest you use your site as a marketing tool, both for yourself and projects you're interested in, and be happy with that.

I would focus on selling yourself, not selling something. Your Pagerank should help you speak with more influence about subjects that you are an expert on, and then, use that expertise to get jobs, consulting, funding, grants or get published.