Backlinks are crucial for a website's SEO because they indicate to search engines that other websites find your content valuable enough to link to. However, it's not entirely accurate to suggest that a website can only achieve success through natural and honest backlinks.
While search engines penalize websites that engage in link trading or buying guest posts solely for link-building, there are legitimate ways to build backlinks without violating search engine guidelines. For example, creating high-quality content that naturally attracts links from other websites is a fair way to generate backlinks. Similarly, promoting content through social media and other online channels can lead to natural backlinks.
The key is prioritizing creating high-quality content and promoting it effectively to attract traffic and establish a solid online presence.