The big issue here is that if you don't get other people to link to your stuff then Google has little way to distinguish quality vs non-quality, source vs copy, lower quality rewrite, etc.

While many people find push marketing tasteless and annoying (and perhaps a signal of poor product quality), the truth is that most successful sites have relied on the person launching them already having some combination of status + influence + distribution + connections, or they used push marketing for a while to build that following and awareness.

The easiest SEO answer to obscurity or lack of awareness (assuming the on-page SEO & site structure are solid) is to think territorially & dominate a niche where you can own the idea. This is a great article on that front. http://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-dominate-your-niche/