Although submitting articles to Hubpages, Ezine Articles, and other directories for your free one-way backlink is still an effective and viable option, keep in mind that when Google finds your duplicate content it will retain the source from the site with the most authority and send the other version(s) straight down the rankings where it will never be of any value. But there is a solution that works. It takes a small investment and a little bit of time to get to know how to implement it correctly.
Quality Backlinks are the backbone to get your site ranked on the SE results. You don't have any other option.
As long as your on page SEO is soild, getting good backlinks is the NUMBER 1 THING you should be doing to rank highly. There is nothing more important at the moment.