How important is Page Rank from your backlink pages?

I wouldn't worry about PR. The only people who tend to be obsessed with Pagerank are SEO companies and online marketeers, me included. Only thing that matters is ranking well for your chosen keywords in Googles Index, currently this is done with good content, on page SEO and decent relevant inbound links, but no doubt the Plus 1 will soon start to play a big part.

Better to be top of Page 1 with no Page Rank than on Page 4 with a great PageRank

If a website on which your are generating back links is relevant to your keywords and of high PR also, then your back links are count because it is helpful to increase traffic to your website. So always try to generate back links on high PR and relevant websites.

There's a lot more to life than High PR sites (just like there's more to life than Google). IMHO, only targeting high PR sites will land you in some hot water faster than you can blink. I feel exactly the same way with the whole do follow vs no follow yarn.

Maybe its because I'm a marketer and not an SEO, but seriously, this is getting to be a bit much now. SEO is only one part of what you're meant to do with your site. Optimize it and then spread the word.

From what I was taught, link building must first and foremost be natural. If you are going to build links to your site, then it needs to look like a normal person did it, and to be deadly serious not many normal people out there know about or even care about high PR sites. If they want to share, they share, regardless of PR, do follow or no follow.

This is what Google looks for. When a site generates so many High PR and Do follow links, and the site itself is not truly worth being as popular as it is, Google investigates and the site is downgraded or iced.

I agree with relevancy though, I mean, you're not going to promote a site about ice cream on another site about wheel spanners. 'Twould be ludicrous.

To me, there are more important things to worry about than getting a page ranked higher (or a site even for those that still believes that Google indexes websites and not pages :P lol). The site itself needs to be well designed, the content needs to be engaging and interesting, and you need to have an outstanding presence in forums and social networks. Here is where it gets interesting though. Many who are obsessed with page rank etc. don't care about the site itself. They slap up some second grade site and then start building links heavily, only going for high PR and do follow. The page then makes it to page one, and reaches the top, and et voila, now the battle continues to keep it there. BUT, the site itself has a high bounce rate, extremely few visitors and no conversions.

feng shui. 'Tis all about balance.