I've got a domain/website that had pagerank 3 (not sure how I got it to 3 though)- it recently dropped to 2. How can I keep the pagerank or increase it? Any advices for a pagerank-newbie?
I think to do well with pagerank you should never be happy with a PR because if you do not continue building fresh links then you will go down in PR.
As you know SEO is an ongoing process and need maintenance. Start doing off page optimization, it will helpful for your website.
The only way to keep the Pagerank of a page is to keep the same or increase the number of links pointing at the page. Content has no direct impact on pagerank.
Along with building backlinks like everyone has suggested, also use NoFollow tags on all of the outbound links on your site. In addition, ensure that you have a link(exclude Nofollow tag) back to your homepage for all pages on your site.
That will make a difference if you're talking about Pagerank flow around a site and channeling it to important internal pages. But, if you're talking about a single page/homepage then outgoing links don't 'drain' PR, the PR will be the same on a page if it has 1 or 1000 outgoing links.
Do not forget that quality backlinks are those relevant or related links..if you post just on some high PR sites just for the sake of getting backlinks, the result will only be short term.
PR will still increase if it's related or unrelated - relevance doesn't make any difference in terms of PR - it does in tersm of actual rankings though - another reason why chasing PR is different from sucess in the SERPS.