SEO and Dana - BCE Session#2

I sat in for an interesting topic , in fact my first on SEO..albeit from a participation player and not as a strategic player. I had to remind myself to be nice and keep quiet.

Dana Ditomaso of liquidesign  moved this session forward. What caught me off guard was my question my "on PR" - Dana's  rebuttal was that it has no meaning at all in todays SEO. To the best of my knowledge this is an important factor for  websites and webmasters, without Page Rank a sites chances of hitting the first page of SERP is slim. This  means that the user experiences is tarnished in terms of not seeing your web page within the SERP.  No wonder it was called as rubback --you rub my back, I'll rub your back concept.

Another topic was "link baiting" within a site. I am opinionated that this can pollute the indexes.  Dana had a point to make, Google does the index and its not in violation of the TOS, its a technique that needs to be used. But then is not link baiting a prop for PR too ?? 

Maybe I need a little bit more grog  or I am just a nerd within google based technolgies ?  :)_