Since its a low competition keyword, you don't need everything to rank. But saying that, you have 4000~ incoming links, which is pretty high.
So you agree then that white hat SEO, I.e. meta tags, H1 text, page text, page layout, content on the page, keyword density, validation, is all absolutely pointless. My point entirely!
Keywords that generate traffic can also be marked by the amount of PPC ads that appear for the keyword, people paying money don't go after stuff that doesn't generate clicks, or even impressions.
What you've listed there as white hat SEO is just the on-site SEO side of it.
Are you the author of the article? or just submitted it?
That puts it even more into perspective.