Let's say you're trying to get yourself to the top of a not-very-contested topic. For example, imagine you have a comprehensive page on yellow-bellied bumblebees. There are other pages on the topic out there, but nobody has a commercial interest in it, and you've had good luck getting other such sites to the top of Google and other search engines by good content, search-engine friendly site design, link cultivation, directory submissions, and other suchnot. That said, you'd rather get them there in 3 or 6 months, not the usual year.
So, my question is: What are the most effective ways of getting lift for low-competition keywords? Given limited time, what order do you do things? What techniques deliver the most bang for the buck?