How do I best rank a site with no current backlinks?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Sheldon Payne: Start by creating more content. Depending on your industry you can also look at some top influencers in your space and interview them on your website. At the same time you can work with them to add links back to your website.
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  Jim Munro: What is your basis for deciding there are no backlinks?
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  Anthony Cioci: seoprofiler
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  Jim Munro: I hope I didn`t enter the wrong domain name but SEMrush lists 300+. They don`t look all that valuable though.
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  Anthony Cioci: Wow Jim, I pulled my metrix from seoprofiler.
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  Anthony Cioci: Jim i got my metrix from seoprofiler.
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  Jim Munro: Different tools yield different results because the web is in a constant state of flux but the SEMrush report indicates that their backlink profile has been steady over time, Anthony.
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  Michael Martinez: You may want to run this query on Google: "medi-alert.com" -site:medi-alert.com
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  Anthony Cioci: what`s that going to tell me. I see all the links to this domain.
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  Michael Martinez: Anthony Cioci Are you comfortable with those links? I rarely see that many PDF links pointing to a Website.
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  Anthony Cioci: Thanks Michael Martinez , I`ll have to look at them pdf. Those are for downloading our brochure or specials we have.
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  Michael Martinez: Anthony Cioci If you know what they are, where they came from, and they have a legitimate purpose (other than to influence search rankings) then they should be fine. It`s hard to judge from your original question whether you knew any links should be there. So I may have been TOO alarmist.
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  Anthony Cioci: Michael Martinez Thanks............I`ve gone thru a few pages and noticed some pages I wish were not there. Is there a way to remove those pages we don`t need?
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  Michael Martinez: Anthony Cioci If you control them then just delete them. There are ways to be REALLY sure, like setting up 410 status codes, using the URL removal tool, etc. If you do NOT control the pages then unless there are hundreds or thousands I would not worry about them.