A new domain does not strictly need backlinks to index or to rank for low-competition long-tails, but it does need them to compete for anything contested, so the answer is conditional: not for the easy wins, yes for the competitive ones, with competition level as the pivot. Both flat positions are wrong. It is not true that nothing ranks until you build links, since fresh domains routinely pick up low-competition terms with no link building at all. And it is not true that links do not matter for new sites, because the moment you reach for a keyword anyone else wants, the absence of links becomes the thing holding you back.
On the easy side, content can rank link-free because winnable long-tail queries are not heavily defended. If almost no one has written a strong, well-matched page for a specific, low-volume query, your relevant page can rank on the strength of its content and basic on-page signals even from an unproven domain, and indexing itself needs only crawlability and discovery, not a link profile. This is exactly why a new site can start earning real, if modest, traffic before it has built a single deliberate backlink, and why “you must build links before anything ranks” overstates the case.
On the contested side, links become decisive. For any keyword with established competitors, those competitors typically have backlinks signaling trust and authority that your new domain lacks, and content quality alone rarely overcomes that gap. Here backlinks are doing the work the domain’s short history cannot do yet: vouching for you so Google is willing to rank you against proven sites. So as you move up the competition ladder from obscure long-tails toward valuable, fought-over terms, the need for links rises with it, and at the top end you simply will not compete without them.
The practical path follows the pivot. Start by publishing genuinely good pages targeting winnable, low-competition terms and let them rank and bring early traffic without waiting on link building. In parallel, earn backlinks from relevant, credible sites, and aim that link effort at the more competitive terms you want to win next, since that is where links are the unlock. Match your link investment to competition level: skip it for the easy terms you can already take, and prioritize it for the contested ones you cannot win without it.