There's more that goes into PR than just how many backlinks you have. If you're looking for something to check how many backlinks you have then I recommend SeoQuake. It's easy to use and I like being able to look over websites' coding if I think NoDoFollow is lying to me about whether or not the site allows dofollow links.

Welcome Eddie! Definitely check out SEO Quake. It can give you a ton of information, and best of all it's free!! Another source of info that I use is Alexa... you can check out individual backlinks and all kinds of info for any website. And, again, it's free!

I still feel the best backlink checker is Yahoo, because at least you know it is backlinks that have been indexed.

Welcome to WF Eddie, Nicole took the words right out of my mouth.

Go to Yahoo, type:

site:yourdomainhere(dot)com

You will see the links.

BackLinkWatch.com
domain-pop.com

Both are free and will show you back links and PR.

If I were you, I would read the Googe SEO Starter Guide. Watch the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel. If you realize early on what Google wants, you will be better off! And keep an eye out for reputable sources and reputable sites. Make sure to follow good experienced people instead of fly-by-night blogs!

how can i create backlinks.

Welcome Eddie!

With regards to your question, I have a friend who does SEO for some websites as one of the services he offers. The guy has been in the IM business for more than twenty years, but yet he shares to me that sometimes, the sites he works with go up pages steadily until the first page of the search results in google, and then suddenly drops back to the last page. I guess then it would be safe to say that there is no specific number.

He explained that backlining and SEO is more of a tweaking thing, rather than a definite number thing. It is more a matter of estimation, in order to go up steadily without sounding-off Googles sensors.

My suggestion to you is if you are new to IM, don't hurry things up, do research and understand what you are doing in order to avoid certain pitfalls in the trade.

Bob

As you get more advanced you will discover it's not just raw backlink numbers, but what anchor text those backlinks contain. A good free tool for this is linkdiagnosis. For the record, I've seen sites with 200 backlinks with keyword anchor text outrank sites with close to a million backlinks that look like "click here!" or "www.exampledomain.com"

I think one way of increasing PR is bookmaking, which increase banklinks to the site and hence increase PR?