Here's a couple strategies:
Develop your own network of "satellite" sites. Make them into authority hubs in your niche and then link to your main site.
Going further into that, create high-quality articles and send them to the webmasters of your competitors. Tell them that your only requirement is to keep a link within a resource box towards the bottom of the article. The link will go to one of your satellite sites that have NO EXTERNAL LINKS. Once you've got a decent amount of links pointing to your satellite site for authority sites, THEN link to your main site.
...there's lots of ways to get links
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