You will need a decent link profile to rank well in the SERPs.
Many of the linkbuilding strategies that worked well a decade ago are practically useless today. Blog commenting, submitting your website to directory listings and link exchanges are not good ways to improve your footprint with Google.
Instead, you need to focus on building high-quality links.
Guest blogging, getting the attention of news sites and encouraging other bloggers to link to your articles are some of the best ways to build back links that will improve your rankings with Google.