The thing I hear the most from business & website owners looking for SEO assistance is, "I want to be #1 for 'x' term." When I hear that, I'm all, "back up son!" Because your goal shouldn't be an obscure desire to rank #1. The ultimate goal should be to drive more qualified traffic to your website, and to engage and convert that traffic.
For example, let's say you have a website and on that website you sell iPhone cases, and you want to rank #1 for "iphone cases." But you don't just sell any ol' iPhone cases, you sell really high-quality, expensive, wooden cases. It's highly unlikely that the average person looking for "iphone cases" wants to spend $75 on a fancy one. Ranking #1 for that keyword may bring you more traffic, but it probably will not be the right traffic. (However, if you aren't getting the right kind of traffic, it's highly unlikely you could ever get to #1 because users won't be engaged with your content. But just ignore that fact for now.)
For another example, let's say that you have a website that sells Nutella scented pencils and you want to rank #1 for "nutella scented pencils." However, "nutella scented pencils" gets like 5 searches a month. It would likely be smarter to target a keyword that is much higher volume but still describes your product well. Perhaps, "chocolate hazelnut scented pencils" gets many more searches a month and is still close enough to your product that the audience would still be relevant.
So before you set your sights on a specific #1 keyword ranking, think about your larger goal first. Doing so will help make sure each piece of your strategy makes moves toward getting there. 👍