I believe that one way or another, a website with backlinks is always better and it is nearly impossible to get a good rank on Google without getting quality backlinks, what do you think?
Backlinks can be generated manually or automatically and the question is how can you create quality backlinks? Content that answers targeted audience needs and expectations also interesting as well as beneficial to them that can be shared to others.
Is like you are saying " is best to have a good reputation ". Well, of course is best, but you are missing the point here . What creates the good reputation : The VALUE you bring to the marketplace. If you have reputation but no value, people will smell you as a fraud faster than you can see your cents paid-for-clicks in account balance.
Backlinking is incredibly important but it is not the "be all and end all". That is just one little part of SEO. Quality content, image alt text optimization, website structure, etc. all play a huge part into your ranking.
It is true that backlink is the root of SEO because standard SEO topics include content planning, keyword phrases, social media, competitor analysis and the topic that links all this together is backlinking.
I would highly disagree for backlinks to be the most important factor to rank. As the Google Algorithm keeps changing, there are other elements which are considered to be "insignificant factors" plays important role in your SERPs.
Of course backlink is important but there are a lot of ranking factors and I believe that Google see it equally.
In my opinion, Backlinks have an important role to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO. Because the more inlinks the more chance for your site to come on top of search engines index.