Needs moar backlink?

I have a few microniche websites that I've been backlinking. Most of them are among google's top 10 search results for my targeted keywords, but still not within the top 3 or 5. I've analyzed backlinks of my competitors, or rather other search results that are among the top 10, such as blogs and amazon, etc and they have much less backlinks than I do.

They of course have higher PR, but I can't figure out how to build PR for specific microniche websites. I've got lots of backlinks but still can't get #1 spot. What else do I need to do? Should I drive cheap PPC traffic/improve alexa rank?

Hello. You may know the PR update hasn't update for a very long time so your PR may still seem low on paper, but in fact you may already have a a very high PR. What can help your page rank is trying to find high ranking sites with keywords similar to yours and linking with them.

If all else fails, stick with adding more links. You can drop them easily to directories like Linkstoo.