SEO without backlinks?

Hi,

My name is Robby Rao, I am a computer science student and the son of a small business owner. I have helped my father run the mechanic shop we own for the past five years, and as all of us know its been harder than usual with the economy the way it is.

To help my father, and other small businesses, I created bizpals.com. I found that the reason we succeed in this environment is because of our loyal customer base, so I created a way to speed along the process of turning a one time customer into a repeat customer and retaining clientèle

Bizpals helps small businesses extend their personal serivice beyond the physical business itself, and helps facilitate communication with their customers. Those are the two keys I believe help develop a loyal customer base and BizPals provides a way to increase both.

I am also on this forum to learn more about how to run a business, and how i can further try and help small businesses. If you have any advice, or suggestions please message me.

Robby Rao
[email]robrao@bizpals.com[/email]
www.bizpals.com

Are external backlinks a must?
Is it not likely to achieve high rankings with no one linking to your site?
I ask this because I don't see any practical way to get external backlinks.
Maybe I should also be asking how do you get backlinks without either trading or paying for them.