You should be focusing on traffic and quality content ONLY, not backlinks and not pr. You guys are still living in 2005.
What's the difference between "link building for traffic" and "link building for PR" PageRank is just a visual representation of how well (according to Google) you have built back-links to your site. Building back-links will get you higher SERps which will in turn get you a Higher PR. A back-link is a back-link
Its really worth if you are selling links. If not as long as you have traffic who care about the page rank.
recently 2 of my sites went from a PR3 to PR1 and the ranking has not been so affected at all, it does affect ranking but not to lose sleep over it.
This persistent error continues. Contrary to many DP posters, here's what Google says (copyright 2009) — "Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results." http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html
That was true a long time ago, and today it's still somewhat true. But pr is still only "somewhat" accurate in terms of ranking in serps.
Only uneducated people accept PR as a valid evaluation of the traffic a site receives. Yes, a high PR can get you better rates on advertisements from your website etc, but so can lots of traffic. For example, AdultFriendFinder.com (42nd most visited site on the web) is a PR 5. If PR was that important, any of the PR 7+ junk link directories would be more valuable wouldn't they? No. PR is used be people who don't understand the true mechanics behind web traffic.
Anticipating answers like this, that's why I said, "here's what Google says (copyright 2009)", with the emphasis on the Google copyright 2009.
Pr is still valued. I would just advise to be patient. If you are going about your SEO in the right way, you will gain higher pr in time.
"...people who don't understand"? PR is created, calculated, and used by Google, which owns the algorithm created by their high-priced IT experts. I think Google's Ph.D.'s "understand the true mechanics behind web traffic" pretty well. I learned in business school over 40 years ago to "follow the money trail". As long as Google continues to dedicate that much time, money, hardware, and software engineers to their patented PageRank, I will not count myself among the "PR is useless" crowd. BTW, to head off a blizzard of posts, yes, I understand that PR is a product of link-building, which virtually everyone agrees is important. I spend lots of time building links (currently 12,000+).
Many say that PR and SERPs are relying on the same variable (links). Thus, build one = build the other.