I know that PR isn't a great measure to shoot for, but I got to wondering - can a site's PR exceed that of the sites that link to it? Can I have a PR8 site with only PR 3 sites linking to it, or do I need to have PR8's and PR9's linking to it? Thanks
In theory, yes you could. Pagerank is gained by the PR bled from the backlinks of your site. So, technically this is possible but you would need an ungodly amount of backlinks.
It's way too hard to have a high PR.. The best thing to do is to gather quality backlinks from high PR sites
I am constantly facinated about how much people care about PR. Surely your position in the search engines should be your guage of how well you are doing.
You can have a high PR on your site than the one linking on you. But it is not only one site linking on you. You should have more quality backlinks on your site. Remember that PR is not a factor of your SERP position. PR has no direct connection to SERP.
one of my main competitors on a very desirable keyword lost all his PR this week. From 6 to 1 in less than a week. Even though I giggled (sorry I couldn't help it), it made no difference to his position in the SERP's. That for me is the biggest indicator that PR means nothing in terms of SEO.