SEO, Social Networking, and Backlinking

I'm coming late to the game when it comes to really getting a handle on SEO, Social Networking, and Backlinking. I haven't come across anything that disproves my earlier posts, so I'm going to work my way forward in the series of information I am posting here on OWA.

I'm just finding it to be a much larger category than I initially realized, and my past approach of writing something and just letting search engines find it is not working too well anyore - if it ever actually worked well.

I also have not been bale to find a definitive answer on how many quality backlinks are required to increase a site's page rank. And - I know - some people say page rank is not that important. It does, however, offer a parameter (other than page views) I can use to determine if my site is moving in the right direction.

Network image by J S Creationz/Free Digital Photos.