website SEO question?

[akiria@hackers.de]

My boss wants me to get a dentist website to the top search result of google. the business does no promotion,advertizing on tv or radio or FB or twitter. Nor do the employees of the company want to assist. (i created a twitter and a fb for them as well as a google + they have been live for 2 months now and they have only posted once on FB about a valentine special )
on top of that im not a dentist so i told them to create a 2 page report on root canals for original content to create the page on root canals and the best they did was a crappy paragraph using multiple keyword from all the services i posted below

example i told them to use a few of the following keywords in the report about root canals.
endodontists
dentists endodontists
sedation endodontist
female endodontist
root canals
tooth root repair
tooth root cleaning
root canal tooth
endodontic
scaling and root planing
endodontics
root canal therapy
dental root planing
endodontist root canal
root canal treatment
root canal surgery
endodontic treatment



I keep trying to tell him to run promotions and we can advertize on Fb and twitter get the word out there and create back links from customer reviews and page likes and such. but i think he has the idea that you can re arrange the words on a website using keywords and content and poof ur at the top of the list..

I have optimized each page to deal with a keyword "root canals in columbus ohio" for example each page has the keyword in the description,header,keywords my competition in the listings range from 40k to 200k search results. and the best i am able to do is page 3.
here is a snippet-

Page 5 of about 141,000 results (0.30 seconds)

Root Canal treatment in Columbus Ohio | website name
http://www.website.com/RootCanal.html‎
Root Canal Treatment, Surgery, Therapy, scaling in Columbus Ohio. Call us at (614)111-1111 for an appointment.

each page uses the below criteria-
M: Meta description and keywords tag
H: Header tags: H1, H2, H3
I: Image file names and alt tags
D: Diverse keywords
R: Relevancy
L: Reputable links


so is it possible to just create a site that has 0 people to a top listing by just optimizing content on the site and i just need to do more keyword research and optimize the content better? I see the first result has little to no info about root canals
1st spot
Midwest Endodontics, serving the Columbus Ohio area including Dublin, Westerville, Worthington
2nd spot
Root Canal Therapy in Columbus, Ohio - Mark D. Raisch, DDS


I have created one page for each of the following services each uses specific keywords,headers,metatags,alt tags and so on
Teeth Cleaning
Fillings (Amalgam & Composite)
Emergency dentist (walkins)or Urgent care
Treatment of Gum Disease
Root canals, including molar root canals
Crowns/Bridges
In-office and home whitening
Athletic mouthguards as well as TMJ applicances
Partials

What am I doing Wrong?

[Abhay Khurana]

You need to create worthy links on those pages and keywords to get those keywords on top of Google.

[David Justin]

I would forget about SEO and start a local ads campaign.