After working for about 1/2 year, I finally manage to get #1 in google for two competitive keywords (and within the first 10 for Yahoo also). Of course it is a lot easier than the English world since I do it for my own region and language. But the two keywords are very competitive so it is not very easy to do that. Yet what I observe is that it seems that getting #1 for such keywords are more for branding sake but not conversions. Since the keywords are quite generic in the niche and it is not targeted. This should also be true for English world. Sometimes we want to get the first place for some generic keywords but they may not help a lot for conversions. Concentrating on long tails may be a better option.
The keywords you get listed for make the most difference on conversions. Generic terms offer less than niche terms.