Text and links in source code but not on page?

Hi all, I am very new to this and, i am sure i am doing a few things wrong, and that's fine with me. I'll work at it until I get it right. Right now, I am following advice from several articles and books, etc. This post could be fairly long so, I'm just warning you.

So, recently, I was doing keyword research and, as per the article I was reading, I went to the top ranked websites for my keywords in quotes on google to see what they were doing. But, it was confusing to me.

The #1 site was just a video sales letter from the clickbank merchant and, the #2 site was to a video sales letter from the competing clickbank merchant. The kind where they tell you not to direct link to. Very little text was on the page. So, still following the advice of the article/book I was reading, I took a look at the source code of the page and, I am really confused at what I found. First of all, remember that VERY LITTLE text was on the page but, in the source code there was a TON of text and links and even keywords in bold. None of which was visible (or invisible) on the page itself.

I tried to ask this question on Yahoo answers but, it was deleted, I don't know why. I don't want to link to the sites so if you go to google and search for "home exercise cellulite" WITH quotes, the #1 and #2 sites listed there are the ones I'm talking about. The text in the html code is fairly random having nothing to do with cellulite aside from the words in <bold> tags and links. The links in the html source code lead to page not found pages.

My question is... is it even possible to overtake the #1 spot with an actual content-rich page/site without using whatever technique this is?

And.. how is this done? I don't want to know so that I can do it, I want to know so that I may be able to overcome it.

Thank you for reading this long post.