Is there anyone who can share which type of backlinks are working currently?
PBNs, guest posts and niche edits are the best links today... well, as long as they're d0follow and meet the other important criteria, obviously (low OBLs on the same page, quality sites / RDs, safe anchor text, etc.)
Also, regarding the d0follow part... nofollow links will work, too if they come from sources that google trusts blindly (big brands usually, but also .edu and .gov sites)
I have created 2 web2s and 1 profile on that article whereas my competitors are ranking without any backlink.
that's too few backlinks (especially since they're so weak) to get decent rankings. And the fact that your competitors rank without backlinks could be attributed to a lot of things: their content is better, their domains are stronger, they have hidden links (hidden from the SEO tools that you used to check their backlinks I mean, otherwise they can't be hidden from google and still benefit from increased rankings), the user engagement / bounce rate / session duration are better, they're more trusted by google because their brands are older / stronger / whatever... a lot of reasons like I said..
All the competitors have low DR, less content, and less authority. Still, I am not able to get to the top position.
how did you assess their authority to know that it's less? I usually consider authority to be the DR, but you said that the DR is low anyway, so what else is there to it that I'm missing? What authority are you talking about?
But anyway, even if their content is less it might still be better than yours, which is why they're outranking you... or like I said, their domains might be older / trusted more by google, who knows? Or it might simply be that their domains are more topically relevant to the keyword you're trying to rank for than your domain, this could also be a possibility....
You need to run a content audit, a backlink audit, and a technical SEO audit for your site and for your competitors' sites to see where the (big) differences come from because - I forgot to mention - the speed, user friendliness (navigation and cleanliness) and structure of the site matters, too. Google compares pages against a lot of factors (over 200 more specifically) when they choose where to rank them, and if your competitors pass more checks than you then they will outrank you a lot
