the toolbar pagerank is only updated a few times a year - but no one knows exactly when. in general, getting more links to your page (especially from high pr pages) will best improve your own pagerank.
Pr updates usually run every 3 - 4 months. But the last one took over 6 months due to some rumored PR algo changes.
Of course the common answers to assisting your website in getting Pr are:
Quality and relevant backlinks(signature link oft times helps but doesnt always do it.)
Text links - Free or paid(dont let google know that you paid though)
Well built websites
Fresh Content
Just to add what lpstong tells you. Although the PR that you see in the toolbar updates every few months or so the actual internal PR that Google uses is a continually evolving thing which is constantly updating.
Just ensure you have optimized sites that are easy for crawlers to navigate through but which are also user friendly.
Try to get a gradual increase on incoming links (do not spend a month getting many links then stopping. This could flag a warning in Google as being unnatural. Also try to have a rotation of text used in the incoming links (if you have control of that). There have been intimations in the past on how Google perceives the same text on links as being unnatural (would everyone that links to you really use the same text all the time, I think not.)
If your site is indexed before the Google PR snapshot and you have few incoming links with PR value cached, you can get PR even within 15 days of launching your site. It all depends on indexing+PR value of incoming links + Google PR snapshot time.
One more thing i should add is do not use any automated software to get thousands of backlinks overnight from spammy websites, your site can be penalised in that case. Manual link building is the righ way to go about building backlinks to your site.
This relevancy is decided by about 200 factors. Page rank is one such factor.
Page rank
The search results are returned by a user depending on what the search engine thinks is most relevant to the searcher. This relevancy is decided by about 200 factors. Page rank is one such factor. The incoming links on a page decide the importance of a page. This type of importance is one of the factors for the page rank. Every link to the page from some other site enhances the Page rank. The quality of the content decides how good the link is. So, to help Googlebot crawl the website, quality links must be added.
Last edited by -Nick- : 01-06-2008 at 03:33 AM.
Reason: Advertising
Base on my experience normally after 3 to 4 month but actually I cant give exact period. It depend , sometimes can go to 6 to 7 month to get page ranks. That only I could tell but we try listen to any others info from our friend here.
Ahh, the never ending question regarding PR. Nowadays, Google updates PR monthly but again, no one really knows. As for getting high PR, my only tried and tested way is to build links for your site. The more high PR pages linking to you, the higher your pagerank. Of course, there are other techniques as well but for me, building backlinks is the only way that works.
it's totally random, used to be at every 3 month, went up to 6 months...and now got to a few months again....to get it higher...well get a few links from high pr sites and you're done
I have heard that PR changes contantly... And we can see only toolbar PR apdates...
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One of my mainsites became a PR1 2 months after i started it....stayed there for 2 more months and lost it, back to PR0...than stayed at 0 for a couple months and after Nick helped me it went to pr2 (THANKS NICK, you guys should listen to what he is telling you! ) :-)
Stayed there for a couple months....And yesterday i got a PR3!! :-)
Quality links are sure helping but like many said here, fresh content is also important....and try to be the authority in your Niche/Market with your site...
Cheers,
Frank
P.S: one other odd thing, i have another site and there are no changes at all in content (since allmost 2 years), but it stays on PR3 since years :-)
how long its depend on you: how many back links you can get for the short period of time... the more the better, and then you have a good chance to get pr
also back link quality is very important.
According to my SEO experiences & researching. Anyone can achieve max PR 7 of 10. I personally never achieve the PR7 but I have thinking in next time for it.
This relevancy is decided by about 200 factors. Page rank is one such factor. 
Nowadays, Google updates PR monthly but again, no one really knows. As for getting high PR, my only tried and tested way is to build links for your site. The more high PR pages linking to you, the higher your pagerank. Of course, there are other techniques as well but for me, building backlinks is the only way that works.
If that lousy site was not that authoritative in your competition you would have been #1 
