Google has made it incredibly hard for content to rank on its own if your site isn't seen as "authoritative" (read: has tons of backlinks and is at least 6+ months old). For most competitive terms, you won't rank at all unless you have a Domain Authority (DA) in excess of 30+

It makes content creators miserable. Some of us just want to write good stuff and get traffic through Google, not build backlinks and be a SEO