Opinions on ranking method

A few months ago a single page website with no links appeared on the bottom of page 1 in the niche I work in. At first I didn't pay attention to it but in the last couple of weeks it has taken the number 1 spot from me. I was scratching my head for weeks how a site with no backlnks could rank 1 for a competitive keyword when I noticed a 4 letter .org domain written in text on the bottom of the website. I typed the domain in a browser and found it 301 redirected to the site which is ranking 1 now. I looked at its link profile and found it has a Wikipedia link, 2 .gov links, 23 .edu links and numerous other authority links. Is this an effective method to rank for a keyword?