I got first page rankings in a keyword that is fairly competitive. There was Wikipedia (PR5), About.com (PR4), 1 .Gov (PR4), Macmillian.org.uk (PR4), Freedictionary (PR3), and other misc websites, and I ranked above every one of them. It took a solid month of linkbuilding and I will show you how I did it. First thing I did was do some social bookmarking to get my website indexed. I did around 50 of them for every page my website had and pinged every single link. I did this in order to get indexed by Google because Google crawls social bookmarking sites very often. Second thing I did was to submit my website to a bunch of website directories. They are valuable because they provide a backlink towards your website which is related to your niche because you get to choose the category. It's very simple to submit to one directory, however it can be a bit time consuming to submit to thousands of them. Third, I made some high PageRank links on various websites. These websites include Squidoo, Hubpages, Wordpress, Blogger, and etc. Make sure you use different content for every one or else you might leave a footprint. These high PageRank links are valuable because they provide a quality backlink to your website. Once I made these Web 2.0 backlinks, I backlinked those with blog comments and profile backlinks. This is what is called a link pyramid because your website sits at the top of the pyramid while your backlinks get backlinked, making an even bigger pyramid and eventually feeding all that linkjuice to one source, your own website. Fourth, I constantly wrote articles, posted them on my website, spun the content, and submitted them to article directories. These also provide you a good niche related backlink and the article directories may even give you a couple visitors. This is a good way to get initial traffic very quickly. Make sure your anchor text is the keyword you want to target. Lastly, I bought many sponsored posts on websites that are about my own niche. This was helpful because the blogposts are usually on the first page for a while, which gives us a nice PageRank boost if the PageRank of the website is high. If you can't afford to pay for blogposts, I would suggest that you offer to guest post on people's blogs in order to leave your link for free. However, in return, the webmasters usually expect good quality content. This is what I did to getting a #1 ranking within a month. The key is to be consistent with your linkbuilding strategy and to always be building links. I did all the linkbuilding myself which is how I did it for free. However, ranking in a #1 position does take time and effort. Without patience and a leveled head, you will not be able to rank high. Patience is the key because SEO is never an overnight solution. Hope I helped out a bit!