Page rank and unique content's importance

In order to make our "site rank first in Google", we need good page rank. The most important thing in getting good page rank is our unique content and having backlinks from good authority sites. We should not have to pay anyone to get backlinks to our site. Any search engine crawls for good content which is original but not re-phrased or re-written in any way.
Following are some important points which we need to keep in mind "My Site Ranks First In Google"
1. We have to know first which keywords we are going to target to rank in Google for.
2. We can use the available online free keyword tools like Google AdWords, word tracker etc which are offered by most of the search engines to find out how many times a term is searched for, in which particular geography this keyword is targeted and many more statistics.
3. In the next step, we have to see how competitive that keyword is and can we use that for our site/blog. One suggestion or a rule of thumb is that we can search the keyword with quotes around it.
4. In this step, search the keyword without giving quotes and look at the top ten sites. Are those links related to some big names or is the first ten full of article and video sites? Where the keyword is being shown? In title, description or domain name?
5. If you find a good site, try to get the page rank for that site. Once if we are able to find some good keywords then, we would have to write articles and use the keyword to link back to our site. "My Site Ranks First In Google"