CASE STUDY: How did this site quickly get to #1 for a competitive keyword with 155,000,000 results?

Hello, all,

I've come across a very curious case of ranking manipulation in Google. There are obviously some black hat things going on, but I'm not very knowledgable in the subject. How did this site quickly get to #1 in Google for a very competitive keyword with 155,000,000 results?

Site:
best custom essay.net (no spaces)

Keyword:
term papers

Results for keyword:
155,000,000 (i.e., very competitive)

I'm not an expert in SEO, but I know that something is seriously odd here. Almost all of the site's links are fairly new. In other words, it seems like the owner's linking efforts didn't begin until recently, so how in the world did the site get to #1 at all for such a competitive keyword, let alone so quickly? How, exactly, did the owner do it?

I look forward to your expert insight!

 

Okay, first of all, "results" have absolutely nothing to do with how competitive a keyword is. It just shows how many pages are relevant (volume), but it doesn't say anything how powerful a website is.

Just think of it as a nascar race. "Results" is just the number of players, but what good does it do if everyone drives an old slow truck, and you are the one with the Lambourgini?

If you want to find true competition... just look at number one..... and analyze his on-page optimization, amount of backlinks, and lastly what's his PR.

From the looks of things, he is actually decent, but not that hard to beat.

And plus, the keyword "term papers" suck, it only delivers 1600 exact local volume lol. You are better going after much higher volume keywords with less competition. You are only wasting your time