No major surprise if he ranks well for such competitive terms bcoz he's having a high quality authority site with high google TrustRank.
@kev, good point, but Matt's post IS relevant. Look at how many times the phrase appears on that page. That is how relevance is measured, not based on "Oh, this blog is about google SEO". Google counts the keywords on the page and the keywords in the incoming links. Everyone linking to that post uses the same phrase. Is this news to anyone? Guys, Matt wrote that post FIVE YEARS AGO. Dashes vs. underscores August 25, 2005 in Google/SEO Instead of just laughing, you should be learning because it is a good example that what many webmasters believe is actually totally opposite of the truth of ranking. Stop believing everything you read and start looking at the reality; how others are ranking. just my opinion, Bompa
It's a 4 word phrase - buy cheap viagra online - which is easy to rank for. Remove the word 'cheap' and now you've got a 3 word phrase which is getting competitive. Matt's blog doesn't show up in the first 5 pages at least (I got tired of looking for it). So no big deal, anyone can rank for a 4 word phrase.