Well a friend of mine has asked me to look at a keywords he wants to rank for - "new musical" a site called believe the musical is 2nd on the search results but has very few backlinks, maybe 20 or so. Competition for this word is fierce, 182million site results, yet a site with around 20 links is top 3. I just want to know what I'm missing. Surely the onsite SEO can't be that good as it seems rather average looking at it. Also apparently it's been there for a while so can't be down to the google bounce for newbie sites What's the answer guys?
It's probably just the 3rd most relevant site when those keywords are used. Relevant content will get you good SERPs for only certain words, sometimes words you aren't even using as keywords.