Surely SEO can attract a great number of visits, but this requires link popularity, which you are saying will come naturally as you gain respect from your visitors. My point is, you will never get these visitors for a website without established online strength or some kind of promotional activities. Waiting for SEO to kick in is not enough in most cases.

Therefore, new websites need to actively promote their content to their target audience in arenas they are already active. Depending on your site, PPC campaigns, social news sites or online communities might be good choices to build a team of loyal visitors quickly. These guys can in turn provide valuable link juice, which will boost your SEO. And on and on we go.