Google PR is just means how important the page in the eye of google spider. It is complicated. But PR doesn't guarantee the traffic. High PR can be low traffic also.

I think other than you have to know how to do on page seo for the page you want to optimize for your keyword and the title of your page, you also need to do some good quality links inbound and outbound to the page. After that, if you always have fresh content out, you can increase your Google PR faster. But google will not give PR to you so fast. Another factor is site age. In my experience, normally about 3-6months you can go to PR 1. Unless you really very hardworking focus building link and adding lots of content, you may be can get PR 1 in less than 1month but it is very rarely. Anyway, i have experience that with more contents and some links, it even go to PR 2 in just 6 months time.

But PR doesn't guarantee you will be first page of the keyword you optimize. That will be different story. PR will help little. To dominate first page of google is different. =).. long story.. haha..just sharing here.

Yeah, one good tool bar for page analysis is search "SEO quake" in google and install for your firefox browser. Then you can easily analysis every sites PR, alexa ranking, link, site indexed, etc.. if you only want to see PR, then just search google addons for PR toolbar to add into your browser. =)

Hope these tips are useful, first time in lowyat! Great experience!