Replying to How Can I Rank On The First Page Of Google For A Low Competition Keyword?

I should have perhaps searched for a phrase like "ranking for a low competition keyword" on Google before making this post, and actually, I did. But what I read didn't make quite a lot of sense and I wanted to see if there was someone who could help me out a little here.

I'm trying to bring my page onto the first page of Google (not necessarily the first spot) for a very low competition keyword, which has less than 2,000 monthly searches. Now obviously, I'm not trying for the ranking in order to monetize my site, because with such a low amount of searches, there would hardly be any scope to monetize the site. No, my intention is to have a steady stream of visitors to this particular page, because in the near future, the interest for this keyword might be going up. I want to jump in early, and that is why I'm interested in getting a first page ranking now.

When I first created the page on my Wordpress site, I made sure to include the keyword in the URL, and used an SEO plugin to optimize the meta tags and search engine text. Thanks to this effort, I got in on page 5 within two hours. But two days later I dropped to page 10. Is there anything I could do in order to improve my ranking? I don't want some sort of overnight miracle, but a gradual rise to the first page would be good. I'll keep updating my site with content of course, but I do want to know what I can do in order to get to the first page for this low competition keyword. Any suggestions?