I was thinking about this question of "Can I rank in Google without backlinks?"
Let's just assume you can. We will just pretend that everything that comes out of Neil Patel's mouth is 100% true (obviously it is not) and works amazingly well.
Here is a better question than if you can rank without backlinks. Why would you want to rank your site without backlinks? Even if just creating a great site works, in almost all cases it is going to take months, if not years, to rank if you are just going to hope that visitors notice your site and build links for you. Yes, I know many have been brainwashed by Neil and other's ideas of content marketing, but you have to remember that he is working with multi-million dollar, well known and established brands. Of course they can just build a new page and people will take notice of it. Will the same idea work for your little blog that nobody knows about?
To me it is the equivalent of opening a restaurant and just hoping that people take notice and tell everyone they know about it without doing any advertising. Although, I would argue that the restaurant, even as difficult as that industry is, has a much better chance at success than you do.
