I have similar experience to Cybrax in that I have very few backlinks on any of my websites, (there are some unsolicited backlinks), yet my websites consistently show very near or at the top of Google search when relevant search words and phrases are entered. Without going into a lot of detail, this is because of relevant, (in some cases unique), content. With so many websites about so many subjects available on the Internet, interesting, relevant or unique content can be a very challenging goal so, as mentioned by others, good quality links and meta tags are something to concentrate on for SEO.