You can't totally depend on the content alone, I know content is what matters most, but also links are important as well.
If you only have quality content and no backlinks, how can you beat your competitor who have both content and backlinks.

I let link building happen naturally by having great content that people share.

No. Which isn't to say that content should be your main focus. Instead of looking at it as link building, look at it as promotional opportunities. A guest blog on another site might be a backlink, but it also drives traffic to your site. You wouldn't open up a new business and then fail to promote it.

Let's be honest. You may have the worlds best content on your site, but if you don't use ANY promoting methods then there's no point. No one will find your site, you won't make any money etc... There's a really tough competition online, yet alone search.

I've been trying to do some of both lately.. I believe it could be helpful to do both

Not in my case. You still need links to rank in Google. To reduce risk, be random and roll a dice and pick one of these methods on each roll.

Roll once per day, or week, or month:

1. Blog comment on a related site with you real name
2. Guest post with a raw url link
3. A Youtube video raw link in the video description
4. An article link with related keywords in the author/bio resource box
5. A link exchange with someone in a similar industry in another state or in another part of the world
6. A comment on Matt Cutts' blog

I've seen blogs rankings recently JUST by having a ton of comments and shares. They don't even seem to have any real content - they just open up a debate and get people talking.

Backlinks are still definitely helpful but a softly softly approach is needed now more than ever.

Sorry but the fact of the matter is, if you aren't promoting your content, no one will see it.

So yes, link building (or other promotional tactics) are kind of necessary..

I've been focusing on contents alone as well, which I know is wrong.. but maintaining 1 post a day (ideally) with full time job is a challenge of itself.. let alone sparing another time for doing a guest post or other tedious work

Prioritize. You do need link building maybe not a lot but you do need it. Content creation is also important . Social media marketing is also important. You need to balance your time between multiple things. Too many people focus on building a great website but they get no traffic because they did not promote. It is important to get traffic and quality traffic is essential to your survival.

Define "get away with".

This does not only apply to spun content. Just go to ezine articles or worse even articlesbase or whoever...and compare several of those typical "articles" on a subject to each other. 95% of those $5 articles are extremely simplified and general and if you have seen ONE you have seen all of them.

Whether the content is really "unique" (aka really freshly written from scratch) does not matter if the "unique" content just rephrases what 900 other articles already are about. From that point of view it won't even matter whether the content is spun or simply a rehash done, even manually written.

Here you must also re-think your definition of WHAT ACTUALLY IS A UNIQUE ARTICLE?

Writing the 1000th article on "How to do a reverse phone lookup" and pointing out the benefit that you can do it "from the comfort of your home" is NOT it.

What Google wants today is content which stands out and does not just rehash what is already on the web. This is "unique" content in a sense that you will possibly get the best rankings from it.

One word: outsourcing.

You guys are taking nik0s post waaaaaayyyyyy out of context. He's right. 100%. But whatever.

to be honest, i am seeing very silly reseults sometimes on google, which are useless. often i saw a 503 error site ranking on first page for a medium comp keyword, its just weird...

Backlinks are the back-bone of your site. Great content doesn't mean much if nobody finds your website.

Yes, I build sites and concentrate on content and internal site linking structure (WordPress virtual silo)

A new WordPress silo site I built less than 2 months ago, that has just a few forum back-links is already ranked below 1.75 million on alexa.com

I just slapped content on the site as I went along, in order to get the site built out (I'll go back and improve it later) and I was pleasantly surprised to find the site has good stats:

Bounce Rate
18.80%

Daily Pageviews per Visitor
5.00

Daily Time on Site
6:13

I switched to silo sites years ago, as they typically require 90 percent less back-links to top rank, compared to "normal" sites

This is an interesting discussion, and to be honest, one that I welcome. It's refreshing to see members here asking about "content" and not "how can I fool Google into doing XYZ, through building crappy links".

Still, the whole notion of "create great content and people will link/share it and everything will be cupcakes and candy canes" is seriously flawed.

I'm a big advocate of creating great content, and when I say great content, I mean it. I often invest days creating videos, publishing articles and recording podcasts. I do publish written content, but I make a point to "diversify" my content marketing efforts too. So in any case, you could say that my content is 100% natural - which is what Google continually say they want. (I should point out that I write for my readers - not a search algo)

Here's a few thoughts off the top of my head when it comes to "getting natural backlinks".....

1. No site authority. This can be tough, especially at the beginning because a) no one gives a shit about you b) no one cares about what you have to say. Having others link back to you when you have no site authority (or you're new in the space) is always going to be a tough gig - regardless of how good your content is.

2. People often post links back to sites that are ALREADY ranking. I know when referencing something online, I usually always end up posting links to sites that are featured on the first page of Google for the subject matter I'm targeting (or citing in my own content). Perhaps this is just a behavior of mine that needs to change? I'd be interested in knowing what you guys do.

3. Competition. Depending upon which market you operate in, getting traction can be difficult when you're faced with tough competition - especially if you're in a market like I am (online marketing for Australian small business). There's so much competition in this space that it makes standing out considerably harder. This often means that you end up competing with others that have been working in the same space for over a decade. Getting links here again is hard.

4. Social media. How many people (or webmasters) for that matter really link back anymore? A more commonplace behavior (I would assume) are people sharing stuff via social media. I know I link back to credible sources, but this is 0.01% compared to the amount of "social sharing" that I do. I'd like to get your thoughts on this as well.

5. Webmasters are generally "concerned" about who they link to (or who they get links from) I don't know about you guys, but I know of quite a few site owners that are VERY hesitant about who they link to/from because they're concerned about potential penalties. This might sound ridiculous but it's true.

6. Webmasters are being bombarded with backlink requests every day. No need to explain this one really, but asking for a link is like walking into a bank and asking for free money. (although admittedly, often this can work)

7. Guest posting. Another one that has been abused. Trying to get guest post opportunities will become harder over time with more and more people sending guest post requests to webmasters.

At the end of the day, when publishing content (and not doing any form of link building) you run the risk of shouting into an empty room. (Quote Sean Kaye) I think the notion of "just publishing great content" is somewhat misleading - infact I know this to be true, because I've done it and it doesn't work.

So what's the solution then????

Have a look at this post from Neil Patel.

How to Grow Your Blog to 100,000 Visits a Month Within 1.5 Years

In this article Neil recommends "publishing more content" in order to get more traffic.

Yet, in this article by Derek Halpern, he recommends doing the complete opposite.

Why Bloggers Fail (and What To Do To Ensure You Don’t)

Derek makes a good point where he says, “You don’t have to create content, day in, and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have… in the hands of more people.”

To me, that makes better sense, because you can quite literally spend ALL of your time publishing content and for nothing.

I think in any case, there needs to be a balance. Sure publish great content, but build relationships as well - by this I mean, reach out to market leaders in your space. If your content is good, they will take notice (this is where I think great content pays dividends) If it's rubbish, they'll ignore you.

Through building relationships, opportunities happen, and as a result, so does all of the other stuff - including backlinks.

Think of it as promoting your website instead of building backlinks and it would be fun, i promise you. ;P

I am not skipping Link Building... it is very important to beat your competition.
If you competitors have a strong backlink profile then you will certainly have to continue with link building!

Main focus must be on the quality content. High quality content rank very fast. It will be best, if you build quality links with quality content.

For anyone that's interested, this looks like a great resource to find ways of creating backlinks to your site.

Link Building Strategies - The Complete List

I've tried it, and I know some people who have been successful at it.

To be honest if you want to be successful going the "great content" route, you really need to get the word out through social media. If you go viral you'll get the backlink help, plus you'll already be getting the traffic.

It mainly depends on how you want to get traffic though, through seo? adwords? There are lots of ways to do it, you just have to decide which method.

I am sorry to say but you will need to invest time in your off page SEO. Yes it's possible to get traffic in time by regularly posting good content. However, this may take a bit longer since and still backlinks matter when it comes to ranking sites on SERPs.

While it is very important to focus on content, you need to at least have some time in building your site's backlinks. You can focus more in building quality links instead of quantity so this way, you can just allot a bit of time on your off page SEO.

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I'm not sure but i believe links are what makes a website visible in Google, and content alone won't help. I have seen website with top notch content, providing information and serves the purpose for visitors, but there are not ranking anywhere close!