This is a general question about PR - I had the understanding that PR more or less determined where you placed in the SERP. I have a site that ranks #2 the SERP for my main keyword (#1 for many others), but the site is a PR 5, and most of the other sites on the first pages of results are PR 6. I know that PR is only one factor in many when determining SERP placement, but it seems like higher PR sites would come before lower PR sites. Not that I'm complaining - just trying to understand how it all works. Thanks
PR is not about your SERP directly it may affect somehow but indirectly... PR only reflects with how many sites had accumulated quality backlinks... you still need to have different strategy for how to rank your keywords such as anchor text...
Thanks. I think that leads to another question - if I have a PR5 site that is #2 (#1 being a wikipedia article - probably not going to displace that), then is there an incentive for me to keep trying to drive my PR higher?
your goal should be the traffic as its most important. PR has nothing to do with sites ranking. A site with PR1 can be #2 on search results and site with PR5 on #10 for the same keywords.
I know many sites with PR1-4 that rank higher than sites with PR5-6, ignore the PR and keep building your SERP position, it seems your doing a good job so it can only get better.