Just a quick thought for you; I am sure you will more!
Seems to me that many times that is the case:
-- if the url is thebestchickensoupforthemeatloverssoul
-- and you search for "the best chicken soup for the meat lovers soul"
the site containing the keywords seems to have quite a leg up.
Another example:
a friend of mine has a website. blackfootriveroutfitters....
he has pretty good content now and deserves a good rank.
But, it was not long ago his content was crap and still ranked first.