Is Content Still King? Are backlinks the End All and Be All?

I've recently started a niche site. I am only rediscovering SEO now since I last dabbled in it 5 years ago. I am also new to niche site marketing.

I chose a low-mid competition keyword with decent traffic, choosing a topic that I genuinely care for and has value to me personally. From my competition analysis, the competition doesn't seem to be that strong, so I finally decided to take the plunge and start my site.

2 weeks into it, I noticed this one website skyrocketing the search rankings, and is now consistently ranking 1-4 in the keyword/s I want to rank in. Now I really shouldn't mind it because plain and simple; this is a competition. What's bothering me is the website's content. More specifically, the quality of its content.

This website's content is pure crap. It's obviously spun by some software and the author didn't even bother to make it readable. Even the layout and the theme looks horrible.

I did some analysis on it, and the only thing that stood out was that it had a ton of backlinks. Not even relevant ones, just a ton of random backlinks. On the other hand here I am writing my own content, doing research, and being careful about my backlinks, and it seems my rankings are sinking like a rock.

What is he doing right? More importantly, what am I doing wrong?

This deeply concerns me because the niche I am into is a health niche, and the information that people get on sites like these can help or harm them. Call me an idealist but I am genuinely concerned about the quality of the information that people with health problems get from sites. This probably what prompted me to make my own site in the first place.

What happened to Google rewarding good quality content and high quality backlinks? Is the amount of backlinks really more important than the quality of content?


ps: I don't know if I should/could post a link to the site im talking about. Hint: he's #1 in the keyword "reduce uric acid" using google.com /ncr.