Do backlinks really matter for seo? let me give you people an example where without backlink a blog is ranking excellent. ipmango.blogspot.com is a blog which has no backlinks. but search 'whois ip commands' on google.It tops. there are 150 more keywords in which this blog ranks excellent in google.
Backlinks matter a lot when it comes to top search engines like google. Not just back links but quality back links
One way backlinks is actually translated as a "vote" or "thumbs up" from the other sites or blogs towards yours. And yeah, it is important.
Yes. Backlinks play a major role in SEO..the more strong backlinks you get, the better your site will rank.
Google is not the only algorithm that considers backlinks as 'votes' for your site/page. HITS was another popular algorithm before google came around and introduced PageRank. I am sure other SEs like yahoo and live also have their own variant. So, YES backlinks are important for seo.
Backlinks are really really important. Onething, a site may be doing well without backlinks only for a short while. in long run backlinks needed
No. There are still some backlinks to your sites. You can check it from Yahoo site explorer. And being a blogspot site I think you will automatically get one to two backlinks from blogger. One is from your profile page. May be the search term is not a competitive one so that it can be ranked well easily. If you search the term 'whois ip commands', you will see that none of the sites in top 10 include all these three words in their titles. And from this you can sense the compeitition of your keywords
In response to your example of a site with no backlinks with great ranking... The drummer from Def Leopard has found great success as a drummer with only one arm...but I'm pretty sure another arm would help him out a great deal. Ever played a video game from start to finish with the weakest weapon available? Of course it can be done, it's just harder to do. Backlinks ABSOLUTELY do provide a huge SEO benefit, as long as they're RELEVANT. That's the one point too many people discard. Buying a thousand random backlinks to your site is only going to hurt your rankings. RELEVANT, do-follow links are priceless.
Backlinks has an effect on rankings but it's not the only basis for ranking a site. The site ranks for specific keywords because the keywords is in content.