NOOBIE QUESTION :) :What is the easiest way to bring up you PR because I dont know how to bring it up or even what makes it go up or what it means.

PageRank is just a measure of the "quality" of the links pointing to a given page. More specifically, each page that links out contributes to the PageRank score of each page that it links to. So to build your own PageRank you need more imcoming links, keeping in mind that the higher the linking page's own PageRank, and the fewer other links on that page, the better it is for you.

Originally posted by Bakie
NOOBIE QUESTION :) :What is the easiest way to bring up you PR because I dont know how to bring it up or even what makes it go up or what it means. When you say "bring it up", do you mean how do you view your PR? If you install the Google Toolbar you can have the PageRank appear at the top of your browser window. :)

As for what makes PR go up, JayC said it well. Google's official explanation:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

http://www.seopapers.com - some good articles there, I just submitted one which should be accepted soon which does concentrate on boosting your page rank

The best way to improve your PR is to submit your site to as many directories as you can. Of course you will have to choose directories with a category directly related to the content of your site. Moreover, the better is the PR of the directory, the faster it will help your PR improving.

Try to get some backlinks. Also remember that it's harder to turn your PR from 6 to 7 than to 5 to 6 etc... So there certainly will be a time where you won't be able to improve your PR anymore (unless your site is VERY big). Don't worry that's normal.

Originally posted by Kristo
The best way to improve your PR is to submit your site to as many directories as you can. Of course you will have to choose directories with a category directly related to the content of your site. Moreover, the better is the PR of the directory, the faster it will help your PR improving. I wouldn't really agree with all of that. There are benefits, PageRank-related and otherwise, to almost any directory links, but in general they're far from the best links for building PR. There are two reasons why: the internal pages, where your link would be, of most minor directories have very low PageRank for the most part. It doesn't matter what the "PR of the directory" is (which may be taken as meaning the index page), what matters is the PageRank of the particular page your link is on, and the number of links on that page. That's the second weakness of many directory links: the PageRank benefit is diluted because there are so many other pages linked to along with yours.

Whether the directory is "directly related to the content of your site" has no bearing on PageRank calculation.

Of course, too much focus on PageRank isn't a good thing... many more factors come into play in ranking algorithms, and so the theme or topic of the linking site will play a role (and that will also affect the usefulness of the direct traffic you might get via that link). The content of the linking page will play a role rankings, as will the authority score for the linking site, the hub score, etc. -- they'll play a role in ranking you pages, but not in your PageRank.

Another thing to keep in mind with directory links: there's a strong feeling at Google that paid links disrupt algorithmic linking. Depending on the structure of the directory's pages it could appear similar to a common paid links page, whether you're actually paying for the link or not. I'd be very careful about showing up on a web map as having the majority of my inbound links coming from this type of site.

Hi Bakie,
Apart from what others have suggested,the best way to exchange link with other sites which got related content is to do a link exchange with a site which got a PR-3 but only 20 links rather than PR-6 but 60 links. More the links on a site, lesser it will count towards vote to you site.