what is page rank and how do i find mine??

Hi,
PageRank is purely a measure of the number of links to a specific page and the 'weight' of the pages those links are from. If you create good content then more people may naturally link to that page, thus increasing its PR. Google does like content on a webiste, as new content also means more backlinks as most pages will probably link to the homepage.
There are many different ways to do this:
Websites that check for you: DigitalPoint, PageRank.net, WebmasterBrain, StarGeek, PR Lookup
Software: Google Toolbar, PageRank FireFox Extension

GudLuck
SBalan Group
http://www.sbalanprojects.com/

How technical do you want to get with the answer? A non-technical answer is here: http://www.getasiteonline.com/?q=node/114

But if you want to get technical, it's a numerical result of an algorithm of Google's that attempts to rank the relevency of your site to search key words based on incoming links from other sites. There are many things that we (the public) know about it, but the nitty gritty details are kept confidential by Google.

It's also important to note that this may or may not have much of an affect on actual SERP's. Tim's article said that Google does use PR to rank sites - I'm not sure that that's true to a large extent. I don't think it's a major ranking factor (this site ranks ahead of quite a few other sites with better PR, for example). This forum thread has some more thoughts on that. I haven't seen any knowledgeable person lately claim that PR has a big effect on SERPS - they're more likely to say the opposite.

However, it may have an affect on how often and how deeply your site is crawled. From Matt Cutts:

guy who works at google and that wrote: A: One of the classic crawling strategies that Google has used is the amount of PageRank on your pages. ... In general, getting good quality links would probably help us know to crawl your site more deeply.

It is also true (from what I understand) that link quality does have an affect on SERPs. So link quality affects SERP's but PR doesn't but PR is a meausre of link quality (if that makes any sense!). Keep in mind that Google has over 100 ranking factors - links are one of them. PR might be one of them, but it's not the whole story.

I'm trying to find something on his site about PR and SERP's but haven't come up with anything specific yet.

ETA: Old Welsh Guy has some interesting insight as well.

you can find your pagerank at digpagerank.com in over 700 DCz

btw... the prescribed method of checking PR by Google is through its its toolbar (IE or FF). According to them, the rest of the methods eat up their resources and should be avoided.

Ya right!

although google doesnt have any official updation schedule, page ranks are updated quarterly these days.
If you start getting links now, your site should have some rank by january.

Internally they do update a page rank continuously as they find and evaluate new links. What it doesn't do is update the toolbar PR at the same time. That they save for quarterly updates (not sure why).

So I am a zero too. How do you increase this?

cretedesigns.co.uk

Just concentrate on getting good back links from relevant sites. Submit your site to the directories. Make sure that it is at the right place and/or right category. Otherwise it will be useless. Getting a good PR does not happen in an over-night. Long time dedication is important. Have Patience !

Thanks. Can you tell me which directories?

Here is a list of Approved SEO friendly directories

Also read the discussion here about getting one-way links. If you're at PR 0 any good backlinks are good so submitting to directories is good. Try to get into Yahoo and Demoz and anything that's specific to the topic. The value of directories can vary a lot - check their PR. Remember that search engines are looking for good content for people. If your link is there for people then it's probably good. If it's just there for search engines then it might not be worth your time. They are always finding ways to weed out links that are just there to game the search algorythm.

http//info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php

dont forget to download the excel file, which too is an excellent list divided in proper niche categories.

Fixed now in my post - just mistyped the quotes on the url tag

I found the excel sheet most useful too (make sure you check out the categorized worksheets - I almost missed those at first. See the tabs along the bottom)

There are 1000+ directories, but it could be wiser to select the premium list and getb into there. Some offer free...some offer free with reciprocal links....some offer paid ones. So better concentrate in the same manner. Give importance to the free directories and then to the reciprocal ones and then to the paid submissions.

Try Alexa.com to find your page rank. It will give you the exact position.