Newbie questions here!

[vahsi000]

Hi everyone, i've been learning more and more about SEO every day and i'm also building a website that falls under 3 categories, 1. Mmorpg reviews 2. Mmorpg trips and tricks 3. Flash games. Now since i've got the majority of the content under mmorpg reviews, i did a bit of research on those keywords on google and found out that the last link on the page had a page rank of 3. Now I don't think it would be too difficult to get my newly built website upto page rank of 3 withing a month with plenty of self promotion on forums.

Can someone give me advice/ more research on these topics? Like am i underestimating my opponents? What I also really want to know is how do I find out how popular some keyword are, like the keyword "mmorpg reviews", how many people search it per day on google, is there a way?

Any help will be greatly appreciated!!

[Slashdot]

Getting a PR of 3 within 1 month - i think that is a very random occurance. Usualy google PR takes about 4 months to be solidly established.
Even if you get a PR 3 in google i doubt it will be the same in all google servers.

[John]

It all depends on when google updates their PR rankings. I have many sites that I've launched 1 month before an update and they get a PR 4 right away. I find it all depends on backlinks, spend a lot of time getting backlinks and it will pay off.

[chromate]

Vahsi000, Remember that the toolbar PR and Google's internal PR are two different things. You could get some PR within a matter of days, but it could take months to appear on the toolbar. Forget thinking so much about the PR and concentrate on getting quality links, that in addition to improving your site's rank, will also bring in traffic.

You can check roughly how many searches are done for a keyword using this tool...

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

[John]

You can also try http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

[Giles]

I managed to get a PR4 within around two weeks thatnks to a well timed google update. Getting 3 or 4 is a lot easire than a 5, IMHO. But don't focus on PR too much, if you are PR 4 you won't necessarily rank higher than the site ranking in your keyterm. Make sure you have good keywod density and keywords in your URL.