A lot of SEO-minded bloggers will huff and puff about the backlink building strategies that catapulted their posts to the first page of search. I’m not one of them. The backlinks clearly can help a blogger earn the authority that helps you snag a ticket to high rankings.
See, first of all, Google and the other search engines have got quite good at sniffing out the evidence that proves (or suggests) readers get value from your posts. As Alexa’s Kim Cooper wrote in SEO Copywriting for Google and Humans, “The more you serve the reader, the more Google serves you.”
And secondly, when you publish highly useful content and promote it well, it gets shared, seen, and yes, linked to.