Now in a certain keyword-area i work, which is 'very competitive, the site with the most minimal content, updates, backlinks, old look...is always n°1. How come? Is it because it's most visited? Is it because of it's steady (never updated) content? Someone understands this?
Judging by you saying it has an "old look" I'd say this particular ranking has to do with the age of the website. It most likely has the upper hand in terms of age.
I think that age is important factor in google rankings. IMO a new site with lots of content can not outrank old site with less content.
google is about unique content as google indexed old pages first so it ranks high, Look doesn't have much to do with ranking.
Age could play a huge role on that site ranking, but I don't think it is only the factor that stabilize it on its position. There could be some other reason behind it.
I think update you website content on time, and get the high quality content is very important for a website
Age is really one of the main factors. My fairly new sites are also struggling a bit on some keywords where top rank has been held by an old site for ages. This old site is never updated, but still it continue to rank number 1. I guess all we can do is to have better content, and build links. Once site gets old and is of high quality, I believe old site will drop in rankings.
IMO, age of domain are very important. I build a throw-away page on my 5 y/o domain and it got rank #1 in a few days while a page on my new site still stay at ~#250 after few weeks.
If the content is old and so is the website, I guess that's working very well for you. Your site's content is probably rated as genuine or "original" especially if it is old and has been around for a long time. Google is NOT just about content. I used to believe that myself but as it turns out, Google is about a lot of things backlinks, content, site age, site URL etc.
Google consider 200+ factors in their ranking Algo. Some new sites start off with a good ranking. This is because Google gives a New Content Boost to some new sites/pages: this boost helps them to rank high but this boost is only temporary. So it is possible that the site you see on top is there because of this boost. Content is King: content can help your site to attract quality/relevant/natural backlinks. Just keep adding quality content and your site ranking will improve.
i have seen this myself alot are coded very poorly also i.e no semantic markup, tables for layout etc. age of the domain and how long the sites been up are big factors, but in time with unique content you will be likely to replace these sites.